


Take me away

by Macchiolina



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Blood, Canon Divergence, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Five is a good brother, Flashbacks, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Protective Siblings, Rated For Violence, Sibling Bonding, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, i just love vanya, leonard peabody is a shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-11-21 20:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18147173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macchiolina/pseuds/Macchiolina
Summary: When she thinks about it, after one year and half, Vanya wishes she had found the courage to make the right choice and to kick him away from her life. She wishes she had cared enough about herself to understand that it was not the right way to love. She wishes she hadn’t given him full powers over her.OrVanya is suffering from domestic violence. (Until her siblings find out).





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've recently watched this show and totally fell in love with it.  
> I am italian and english is, of course, not my first language, if you were to find mistakes please let me know!  
> Also, if you think i should add some tags, feel free to suggest!  
> This my first fanfiction ever on this site ^^  
> Enjoy!  
> Machi <3

The first time it happened, he was trying to convince her to keep practicing the violin even though it was late.

“Just a little bit more” he picked up the instrument she had left on the table and handed it out to her, holding the wooden bow in his other hand. “There is still a lot to improve on.”

She had started playing early in the afternoon, right after the kids that came to her lessons on Friday had left, when Leonard had showed up at her door  with a bunch of flowers, slightly blushing.

He had told her that he had a day off, and since his shop was going to stay closed, he had asked her If he could stay listen to her.

 “I am sorry Leonard, but I’m really tired now” she offered him a tentative smile. “Maybe another time.”

“ _Vanya,_ ” he gently took her wrist, but let out an exasperated sigh, as if he were talking to a child and not to a thirty-year-old woman. “I know how stressful this must be to you, really, but if you want to get back at your family for all the pain it caused you, if you really want to prove to be someone, you _have to_ get first chair.”

“I don’t want to _get back_ at family.” She answered, livid,  moving away from him. Then she softened her voice and tried again: “I’m really sorry, Leonard, but what I need right now is to relax, a warm bath and some rest. I’ll resume tomorrow morning, if you want you can come bac-“

“ _NO_!”

He moved fast, before she could even understand what was going on, until she suddenly felt her cheek throb with an intense pain, hot and covered in something sticky.

She brought a hand to it, not being able to suppress a shudder at the contact, and once she looked at her fingers she found them stained with something dark and thick.

 _Blood,_ she realized with shock.

Her eyes traveled back to the man standing in front of her, then moved to the violin bow he was still holding in his right hand, white due to the tight grasp. He himself seemed freaked out by his outburst and was looking horrified at the blood dripping on the carpet.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

Their eyes locked, and all of a sudden she felt emptiness at her stomach, cold digging her bones and her arms trembling.  
She felt in danger.

“Vanya-!” he tried to get closer to her, but Vanya stepped back quickly.

Leonard let the violin and the bow fall to the ground, and took some steps forward. “Vanya, please, forgive me, I – _please_ \- I didn’t mean to, I swear!”

 “Stay away from me” she put her hands in front of her, shaking her head.

Leonard moved forward again, stretching towards her, “Please, don’t do this to me.” The pain on his face was so convincing. “Please, it was an accident, you know I would never hurt you!” his eyes watered and his stare became intense. “I love you, Vanya.”

_I love you._

No one had ever told her that before.

And even though those words had arrived under those circumstances, with a wound that stretched up to her ear, they made her feel good, they made her wish to hear them again, once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times.

She wanted to be loved.

_I love you._

He noticed the change in her posture, the way her lips had disclosed in surprise, the way her chest was shaking with a new feeling, and he opened his arms, inviting her to trust into him. 

When she thinks about it, nowadays, after one year and half, Vanya wishes she had found the courage to make the right choice and to kick him away from her life. She wishes she had cared enough about herself to understand that it was not the right way to love. She wishes she hadn’t given him full powers over her.

* * *

 

Five lands in the middle of the back yard of the old academy, and the bluster of the storm disappears, leaving space only to the last leaves and branches that end their swirling.  
He can feel the smell of the earth against his nose and can’t help but think how _good_ it is, how _alive_ , different from anything in the future he has just come back from.

The academy is just as he remembered it: massive, ominous, surrounded by intertwined and crooked trees that cross the lowest windows and create a dark atmosphere.

In front of him there are three boys and a girl, and even if they have aged of seventeen years, their faces are still easily recognizable; Allison, Luther, Diego and Klaus.  
They gawk at him with their mouths wide open, looking at each other as if to make sure the others can see him too.

In the middle of that garden there is a green statue that depicts Ben, and Five is smart enough to understand what must have happened to him. He allows himself a little moment to mourn him, because Number Six was the only one of them who ever really tried to behave as a brother, other than  a teammate. Six was kind, he was a kid scared of himself, who cried when dad scolded him, terrified by the mission they had to comply and disgusted by violence.

But when he realizes Vanya is nowhere in sight he remembers he never found her body in the future ruins of that house, and wonders if perhaps his sister left them as well, no dear enough to their father to deserve an effigy in her honor.

 _No,_ he thinks, with a twinge in his chest that surprises him, _Please, no._

“Does anyone else see a little Number Five, or is that just me?” Klaus’ voice distracts him from his thoughts.

Allison runs forward and hugs him, and while she holds him he can feel her body slightly shaking, “God, Five, where have you been all this time?”

He doesn’t reply and doesn’t hug her back, but he can’t deny that he’s feeling a spark of affection for her. She is the first human being he’s touched in years.  
Except Dolores, of course, but there is something different this time, there is some sort of… warmth.

“It’s…incredible” Diego murmurs, keeping at a distance with Luther.

When his sister lets him go, Five takes some steps forward and meets Klaus’ odd gaze: there is a weak smile, but he seems so overwhelmed by the burden of life that it doesn’t look like he could ever feel happiness again.

“Is Vanya…” he needs a moment before he can really say it out loud, “Is she dead?”

Allison pales at the idea and immediately exclaims: “No! Hell, Five, no!”

Relief unleashes within him.

“Dad is the one who died” Luther informs him in a grave tone. Only in that moment Five notices their dark suits. _It’s the day of the funeral_ , he realizes.

“Yep, Vanya decided not to come” adds Klaus, as if it weren’t an important issue. “Not like I can blame her, if there is anyone here who had it worse than us, it’s her”

“That is no excuse for behaving the way she did and disappearing for almost two years” Diego snaps, crossing his arms. Five is sure what he can see on his brother’s face is bitterness, and wonders how many things must have changed since he left.

There are many questions he would like to ask them, to understand what happened, but he knows very well he does not have time for this kind of things, so he moves past them, toward the door left open at their backs. He goes inside the dark hall and heads for the kitchen, and he can hear four other pairs of shoes following close by.

 _This place hasn’t changed_ , he thinks at first, glancing at the different rooms, but then he shakes his head: it isn’t true, that house is completely different from how he had left it: sure, the furniture is just the same, the color of the wall as well, but there is something missing, and that loss is almost tangible.  
It lacks him and his brothers, running stairs, the sound of Diego’s knives against their targets, their father’s voice thundering from his office, that same office they could never step in, it lacks Allison and Luther’s murmurs while they went to a place only theirs, it lacks Klaus and Ben’s laughs while they rested from training.

It lacks the sound of a violin.

“What’s the date?” he asks, looking for a calendar. “The exact date.”

“The 24th” Allison answers.

“Of what?”

“March.”

“Good”

Luther gets up from his chair around the table and one glance is enough for Five to be sure his sizes aren’t normal for a human being, not even for one like them. “So, are we gonna talk about what just happened? It’s been 17 years.”

“It’s been a lot longer than that” he scoffs. He doesn’t have time for this. Being stuck in the future changed him, and he surely is not thirteen anymore as his body looks. His memories are longer and darker. He only has eight days to stop the apocalypse, and his only clue is a glass eye.

It’s not like he does not have a plan, of course, he has had more than forty years to elaborate a strategy, but time is running out and he absolutely needs to find the place wher-

_Vanya._

He suddenly stops, both with his mind and his body, freezing in the middle of the kitchen. He is aware of the glimpses the others are throwing at him, and of the attempt of his sister to catch his attention, but he decides to just ignore them.

Why, despite the incoming apocalypse, he can’t help but feel that desperate need to get to her?

He is fifty-eight, for God’s sake, he should be able to establish priorities.

But maybe that’s exactly why he can’t stop himself from asking: “Where does Vanya live?”

“Vanya?” Diego raises his eyebrow, watching him as if he were crazy just to think about going to look for her. “Leave it, Number Five, things are not as they were before.” He averts his eyes, as if there was something else , as if something else happened that he does not want to reveal.

“I didn’t ask for advices, I asked for an address.”

“What Diego is trying to say” Allison steps in “is that our sister doesn’t really want to have anything to do with us anymore”

Klays crosses his legs, sitting on the middle of the wooden table, throwing an apple from hand to hand, “Her life revolves around Leonard now”

“Leonard?” Number Five is sure he has never met anyone with that name, and after all, none of them were ever really free to socialize.

With some exceptions, he thinks, noticing Luther getting closer to Allison and putting a hand on the top of her left shoulder.

"Ah, l'amour mon frere,l'amour" Five looks at Klaus and a part of him can't help but get angry; the signs are easy to recognize: red eyes and black circles beneath them, sudden tremors and a constant scratching at his forearm… he is a drug addict. But the other part of him can only feel pain at that sight.

He shifts his focus on Allison: “Give me that address.”

* * *

 

The street is crawling with people when Five arrives.

He sees men holding briefcases in their hands rushing along the sidewalks, trying to catch the attention of a taxi, women with long, grey coats running on the crosswalk before the traffic light can turn red, cars attempting to overtake each other just to gain a bunch of minutes.

He wonders what is the sense of all of it, when he is aware of the fact that it’s only eight days till the end of the world. He wishes he could scream it to everyone, that they would listen to him, he just want them to get out of his way and go live the last of their lives somewhere else.

People are stupid and bulky, and he hates them for this.

He crosses the street and gets under the building of Vanya’s apartment. It looks so dull and insignificant for someone like her, who used to be so full of colors and music.

He wonders what she is going to think once she sees him. Five is not ashamed to say that when they were kids, Vanya was his favorite. Allison and Luther disappeared every day after training, while Diego kept practicing until it was late, too stubborn to accept a defeat against Number One. He had nothing against Klaus and Ben, but Vanya… He would always find her alone in her room, the violin tucked under her white chin and her fingers around the bow. Whenever he finished climbing the stairs and noticed her door ajar, he would enter slowly while she kept playing her melodies, until she ended and put down the instrument. Then she would follow him to his room and watch him fill the walls with writings, sometimes asking questions, other times staying quiet.

Sometimes he would bring her to the kitchen in the middle of the night and would make two marshmallow sandwiches, handing one to her. At times they didn’t talk, other times he would take her hand and whisper that she was important, too, just like them, that he was going to take her away, away from their father and the pain.

He shakes himself from his thoughts and considers climbing through the open window in the back, before he remembers she doesn’t live alone there.  
He looks for the surname Hargreeves against the buzzer, and when he can’t find it he checks the address Allison wrote on a folded paper. _Maybe she got the number wrong._

When he looks again at the names, though, one he heard just that morning pops up: Leonard Peabody.

Maybe this is  _his_ apartment and Vanya moved in with him recently.

 _Something’s not right_ , he thinks, before he presses the button and hears a metallic buzz. He waits a few minutes, without anyone answering, and then rings again.

This time, he’s sure he hears a complaining voice coming out from an open window, some heavy footsteps, and finally a man saying, annoyed: “Who is it?”

“Hello, I’m looking for Vanya Hargreeves”

There is a small pause on the other side, and then a threatening tone that Five doesn’t like a bit: “And who is it that is looking for her?”

“I am her brother” and quickly adds, “is she home?”

 “No.” The dry answer arrives fast.

“Oh, that’s not a problem” Five keeps a cheerful tone, as if he doesn’t already wish he could punch him in the face, “I can wait.”

“Oh, no, she’s gonna come back very late” the voice on the other side of the intercom suddenly changes, softening, kind, as if he were a completely different person from before. “It would be better if you came back in the next few days, we are very busy, especially Vanya, with the lessons and rehearsal.”

 _She still plays,_ he finds himself thinking, and then he kicks himself for dwelling on details so stupid when there is clearly something bigger happening. However, he can’t help but think about a child with long, dark hair, sitting alone in an empty house with music as her only companion.

The voice adds, “Maybe you should give us a call before, I am afraid that without an appointment it will be hard to manage to meet.”

_Appointment? I am her fucking brother, not some sort of client._

Five represses the bile coming to his tongue, and instead replies “Thank you very much.” And then, using that same menacing tone that who he thinks can only be Leonard has used before, he goes on: “I’ll be in touch.”

Leonard does not reply to that, and the intercom stays silent.

Five considers sitting in front of the door until he sees his sister come back. His fingers in the pockets of his jacket touch the glass eye and his hand closes around it.

 _Only eight days_ , he reminds himself.

He stares with defiance the name written next to the doorbell, and struggles on what to do.  
_Damn it._  
He was always good, in the future, when it came to making the right decision.  
When he was given a briefcase and a name, he asked no questions and followed his target, not caring of who they were; he’s killed even innocents to come back, to save his family.

And now, when the choice is between the world and his sister, the answer should be obvious.  
He sighs, letting his hands curl into fists in his pockets, letting the anger travel through his body, in his blood.

 _I’ll come back_ , he promises, to himself, to Leonard, to Vanya.  
Then he turns around and disappears down the street.

* * *

 

Vanya walks down the stairs of the huge theatre two at a time, with the violin protected inside its case.  
Her back hurts for sitting for so long while playing today, and her fingers slightly tingles, but she can’t help feeling happy.

Making music has always been her door opened to another world, one in which sometimes she and her brothers were normal kids playing together, with a real mother and a loving father, other times she was the only there, lost at the very heart of the Earth, surrounded by flower, scents, lights and shadows.

She catches a glimpse of some of her bandmates on the hallway, and she tightens the silk scarf around her neck while she passes them, saying goodbye with a small nod and a quick smile. She never stays after rehearsal, not after the last time it happened.

She gets out of the building satisfied with herself, and stops for a second to taste the fresh air while she observes the sunset in the distance, red and purple intertwining, a pale pink surrounding the billowing clouds. She gives a little smile.

She dreams of leaving.   
That thought terrifies her. She is afraid Leonard might read it on her face, afraid he might kick her out, afraid of losing the last person she’s left.  

Vanya knows very well that what he is doing to her is not right, she is not a stupid person. She knows he should never touch her, not in that way, and knows he is the only reason why every member of the family hates her. But she also knows he is the only who loves her, and she is too scared to risk losing something so important.

She walks along the streets while the cars passes her by in an endless queue, and suddenly stops when she sees the poster of a movie in front of the cinema.

_Allison…_

She misses a lot her sister. She wishes she could cry for her, right there in front of the cinema, but she’s too scared to even do that.  
She immediately starts walking again, as if Leonard could see her every move.

Leonard had forced her to interrupt any contact with her family. At the beginning, she would simply decline the various invitation , but her siblings had kept insisting to the point that her fiancé had accused her of willingly maintaining relationships with them. That night, he had left on her some of her worst scars; she had one that stretched at the bottom of her back, where she had hit the glass table, shattering it beneath her. The bruises had been so huge she had to call in sick until they disappeared.

After that, she had made decisions she was not proud of. She had used words against her siblings with the only purpose of hurting them, to push them away from their life, to be free of that pain.  
She remembers the trembling breath of Allison at the phone and her shaking voice, the wounded eyes of Diego on that bridge at night.

She’s grateful Klays never insisted too much, and that Luther was on the moon. She already has enough tormenting memories.

She arrives on her street when the streetlights are starting to turn on, and the orange light counters the dark blue of the sky, almost with sweetness.  
She puts the keys in the hallway door, moves past the forsaken bike against the wall on her right, and climbs the stairs to her apartment.

When she enters, Leonard is sitting on a chair around the table, a hand holding his head.

An alarm rings inside her.

“Hi” her voice is small, almost a murmur, full of fear.

He slowly rises, with a sigh, as an adult does when a kid gets in trouble. His hair has gotten longer, and with his head bent she can’t see his eyes while he gets closer to her. Vanya barely manages to put the violin on the small furniture next to her before a hit so strong makes her head turn to the other side.

The pain brings tears to her eyes and she bites her lip so much it starts bleeding. She can’t hold back an hiccup, but when the second slaps comes she’s readier and manages to keep standing steadily.

 “I thought you were done with your brothers!”

Vanya’s eyes widen, and she wonders if Leonard really saw her stopping in front of Allison’s poster. _No,_ she thinks, _that’s impossible._

“I am!” she answers, and a wail of pain escapes her lips when he grabs her dark hair and pulls her forward, until their foreheads meet.

“Do not lie to me!”

“I am not, please, stop!”

“Oh, you are not?” he pushes her and lets go of her hair. Vanya stumbles on the carpet, but manages to steady herself enough not to fall. “Then how come that kid came looking for you?”

“Kid? I have no idea whay you are tal-”

“Liar! He claimed to be your brother!”

He grabs her wrist and brings her closer again, with such a strength that Vanya can already feel bruises forming.

“I am done with my siblings, I swear!”

“Then what is this?”

Her head is spinning and seems to be about to explode, but she strives to concentrate on what Leonard is showing her.  
When she sees what it is, her heart skips a beat.

 It’s her phone.

Or better yet, it was. Leonard doesn’t allow her to bring it with her and she can only use it for her job and her orchestra; and even in that cases, however, he always keep the phone so that she can use it only when he is there as well. 

The screen is turned on and it shows a text.  
The name of the sender is visible, and when Vanya reads it she feels something she doesn’t manage to quite define.

Allison.

She lets her eyes roam over the text and her breath breaks.  
For few moments, the world stops. There are no sounds, smells, there isn’t the pain of Leonard’s fingers tightening around her wrist.

Then, suddenly, everything unfreezes and she feels a weight drop in her stomach and a painful stab at her chest, as if a wound has opened along her lungs, her heart, and she is quickly bleeding out.

_Five’s back. Come home ASAP._

It’s only few moments later that she realizes that Leonard is still close to her, screaming at her to tell him right now what it means.

“Is it some sort of code?” she is not listening, keeps repeating that text in her head in a loop, _Five is back, Five is back, is back, is back, is ba-_ he hits her face again, so hard that this time she tumbles to ground, hitting the wood of the parquet with her elbow and feeling a vibration spread inside her arm, to the tip of her pinkie.

Her lip is split and burning like hell, and her nose is bleeding.

“Since you’ve been lying to me” he starts, his voice low and deep, “I’ll need to start taking drastic measures.”

She doesn’t realize what’s going on until he makes her rise, pushing her towards the bedroom.  
He shoves her forwards and she lands on her knees.  
Vanya has only the time to get up and turn around before the door is shut and locked form outside.

“You’ll come out when I say so” he tells her from the other side.

Aware of the fact that rebelling would be useless, she keeps quite while listening to his heavy footsteps moving away, then she hears the front door opening and be slammed.

 _Why did he go outside?_ She wonders, and a part of her fears it might involve her family. She desperately looks for a hairpin in the bedside table and when she finds it she tries to force the lock, unsuccessfully.

 _I wish Diego was here,_ she finds herself thinking, _He would have opened this door in less than a minute._

The hairpin breaks, and half falls to the ground. _Shit!  
_She immediately looks for another, but it suffers the same fate.

She’s so frustrated that she can feel tears spilling down her cheeks, angry at Leonard, at herself for ending up in that situation, angry at Allison for sending that text, angry because even if she came in person, Leonard would still have reacted that way.

_Five._

She wonders if it’s really true that he’s back. After all, it might just be the umpteenth desperate try to get her away from that house. Yet, something makes her believe that’s not it, that the fact that a _kid_ showed up to her apartment the same day the text arrived can’t be a coincidence.

She grabs the doorknob and shakes it as hard as she can, trying to get out, and realizes she has not taken the medicines yet. She searches for them in her room, even if she knows very well that they are in the cabinet in the bathroom, as if they could suddenly appear.

What she sees, though, is something better: the window.  
She gets closer to it, sending a glance down; the height is not short and the risk of getting hurt falling is high, but she has every intentions of finding out if what she’s been told about Five is true.

She leans out and grips the gutter that runs along the wall, making sure it can hold her. She brings her feet on the window, glancing one last time behind her and then watching the emptiness beneath her.

_I can make it, it’s not  that hard._

Then, she thrusts herself into the air.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank all of you for leaving comments, kudos, or even for simply reading! I did not expect such an amazing feedback, you all made me want to go on and write more. So, here it is!   
> Chapter two, that I really hope you will like.   
> IMPORTANT!!:  
> Also, i wanted to let you know that i have not written the future chapters yet (i only have the general idea of what is going to happen), so if you would like some particular scenes/dialogues between any of them, let me know, and i might consider it!  
> Thank you so much!

She regrets it the moment her feet touch the ground.

Leonard might come back any minute, find out she escaped and get mad as never before.

_He’s going to leave me._ She panics at the idea of being abandoned and immediately tries to climb the gutter up again, but her shoes slip against it every time and she keeps finding herself falling.

Her eyes start burning and few wails escape her lips as she realizes what a stupid thing she has just done. She considers the idea of going around the building to wait for him at the door.

_Maybe he’ll forgive me if I do so_ , she tells herself, and starts walking towards that direction when she suddenly freezes.

_Five_.  
Her breath trembles between her disclosed mouth, _Five is back_.

She throws a glance to the street in front of her, watching the cars tearing down the road and people hurrying up along the sidewalks. She’s overwhelmed by the memories of the last day she saw him, excited about some new theory, furious at their father for not listening to him, while he kept writing with the black marker on the white walls of his room, numbers and letters overlapping in equations she could never decipher.

She bites her lip and closes her eyes, bringing her hands to her temples in an attempt to reflect, to think about what _she_ really wants to do, forgetting for a moment about Leonard and the last few months, not caring about consequences.

She suddenly leaps, running along the road and trying to catch the attention of a taxi; when an orange car stops next to her, she rushes and gets in, slumping on the backseats.   
There’s a strange smell, as a mixture of disinfectant, woman perfume and smoke, left behind by the previous passengers, and while she fastens her seat belt she notices the driver looking at her from the rearview mirror, waiting for her to tell him the destination.

 “The Umbrella Academy”

The driver, a now elderly man with grizzled hair scattered on his head, raises his grey eyebrows in surprise, the pale blue eyes staring at her with an odd expressions. Vanya becomes aware only now of her aspect, a huge bruise stretching on her whole cheek and her lip split in half, and she slightly blushes.  
However, he does not say a word and merely nods, then he enters again the flow of traffic, driving silently in the endless queues.

Vanya realizes she has no money on her and she already knows she will have to ask Allison to lend her some, hoping her sister is still in that house.

It’s night now: the sky is an intense blue, almost black, and the windows are colored in yellow and white, while the neon lights of the locals stand out.   
Heavy clouds cover the stars, and out of a sudden Vanya feels alone.

She leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyelids, resting for some minutes, concentrated on the music that’s coming out of the radio and trying not to think about anything else, about Leonard.

She must have fallen asleep, because when the taxi comes to a stop she jerks awake. The driver asks her if she’s sure everything is okay and she nods, getting down and closing the car door behind her. When he tells her how much she owes him she nods again and asks him to wait, telling him that surely one of her siblings is going to pay for the ride.

She’s sure she sees his eyes widen at the word ‘siblings’ and then he throws a furtive glance to the Academy behind her. He’s suddenly mumbling something about an accident in a bank years before and starts the engine again, leaving her to watch him quickly disappear down the street.

Even though Vanya heard him talking about gratitude for being saved by one of them, she knows he was afraid of her brothers, of their powers.

She sighs and turns toward her old house, and the first thing she notices are the lights on in the different rooms. It has been years since she last came here and she is sure enough that her heart has stopped for a moment.

She feels as if her legs are made of jelly and her hand slightly tremble as she brings it to the doorbell next to the name ‘Hargreeves’, and rings.

It’s almost as if the house freezes for a moment, as if everyone inside is surprised to hear that sound, then it starts living again and Vanya can hear steps quickly coming down the stairs.   
Allison opens the main door and despite the dark, despite the distance, it’s impossible not to notice her beauty, with curls that gently fall over her shoulders and along her back, her skin of a soft  caramel color.

“Vanya!” she screams, opening the electric gate. The clang with which it moves is unnerving, as a fork scratching on a plate, and she remains still until it’s completely wide.

Allison starts running towards her  but stops half way there. Vanya knows she must be remembering everything she told her, all those mean things she said over phone to ensure that she would not keep looking for her.

Vanya takes a breath and finally steps again in that yard, feeling the gravel crunch beneath her shoes. She slowly moves through the dark, until the light of a window invests her face and Vanya can hear her sister inhale sharply, before she grabs her wrist and  brings her closer.

“My God, Vanya, what happened to you?”

“It’s nothing” she answers, buying time to find a plausible excuse. “Don’t worry about it.”

“How can I _not_ worry? Look at your face!” her brown eyes fill with concern, and Vanya can’t help but think she does not deserve someone so good and kind in her life. “Who did it?”

“Just some… guys. They robbed me.”

“God, I’m so, so sorry.” She takes her hand and starts dragging her toward the house, “Come, let’s put some ice on it.”

“Allison” Vanya calls her once her sister shut the door, “Is it true?” she makes a pause and stares right into her eyes, suddenly feeling as if they were ten years old again. “Is Five back?”

Allison smiles kindly at her, squeezing lightly their intertwined fingers, and Vanya can already feel her chest warming up, as a cup filled in red wine. “Yes, he’s back” then she quickly adds: “He’s still out though, we don’t really know where he is. He said he was going to look for you.”

“He did” she replies, looking away. “But I wasn’t home.”

They reach the kitchen passing through the hallway and Vanya feels a great loss when Allison lets go of her hand to open the freezer and search for some ice.   
Then she hands her a pack for her cheek, and Vanya shudders at the contact, thanking her.

Suddenly the whole situation becomes quite awkward, and while Allison scans her in silence, she looks around, picturing as many details as possible in her mind.

_It’s all so… strange._

The stairs shakes under the weight of someone, and Luther enters the room speaking to Allison: “So, who was a-?”

He stops half through the sentence, moving his eyes to his other sister, and even Vanya is surprised to see him. Surely, he must have returned for the funeral.

Vanya didn’t hate her father. Sure, she didn’t love him, but she didn’t hate him either. She would have attended the funeral if Leonard hadn’t been so against the idea. He had said that if she really was done with her family, she shouldn’t have cared. So, she had stayed home.

She gets up and walks towards him, as if to hug him, but then she stops, not sure of what her siblings have told him about her.

Now that they are so close, even Luther notices the conditions of her face, and brings a hand to her visage, shifting the ice pack so that he can check better her cheek: Vanya doesn’t need to see his expression to understand it’s already purple and swollen.

His eyes immediately run to Allison’s to make sure that she is fine, as if whatever hurt Vanya might have done the same to her.   
Vanya is thankful that there is someone who loves her sister just as much as she does, who can take care of her as she deserves.

Luther looks at her again, placing the ice back against the bruise, “What happened?”

“Nothing, really” she replies, repeating what she has said few moments ago. “Just some guys who tried to rob me.”

“Did you hit your head? Did you go see a doctor? You might have a concussion.”

“I’m fine, Luther, really. And had I had a concussion, I wouldn’t have managed to get her-“

“What is _she_ doing here?”

 Vanya glances over Luther’s shoulders, towards the source of the voice, and finds Diego, leaning with his back against the door, arms crossed, numerous knives tied to his belt.

Her heart fastens up in her chest and with every breath she takes she feels as if her lungs are about to explode. Diego was the hardest sibling to convince to forget about her, and with him Vanya had to use all the meanness she was capable of.

She has no doubts that he hates her.

“Diego!” Allison’s tone is one of reprimand, and she gets closer to him, ready to put any type of protest to an end, but Vanya really can’t blame him.

She knows she does not deserve to be there, that she crossed every limit with each of them, especially with him.

“He’s right, Allison” her sister looks at her with determination, ready to deny anything Vanya’s about to say, but she goes on, “I shouldn’t have come back.” She hands her the ice pack, thanking her. “Tell Five I passed by.”

“Vanya, wait!” she grabs her wrist, the same Leonard had held with too much strength few hours before, and an hiss that luckily no one notices escapes her.

“Allison, I-”

“Wait a sec.” Diego gets closer, and the light of the chandelier hits him fully. Vanya can see that he’s taking in her face, and she can read him just like when they were little kids, can see two halves of him fighting, one to put the pride away and ask what happened, the other to ignore her and leave the room.

“It’s nothing” she anticipates him. Every time she tells that story, she becomes more convincing, “Just some guys who robbed me.”

“Vanya, please, stay” Allison puts the ice back on her cheek.

“How can you forgive her so fast? She _left_ , and she treated all of us as if we were nothing but trash!”

“Diego” Luther steps between him and Allison, “stop it now, you are exaggerating.”

“No, _you_ , stop it! Dad died and you’re still trying to please him playing little leader and trying to keep united the family, after all he has done to us, to _you!_ He sent you on the moon, Luther, on the _fucking moon_!”

“I am not trying to please anyone, I’m just doing what’s best for our family!”

“Didn’t hear the news, Spaceboy? We are not a family, we never were and never will be!”

“Guys, stop!” Allison shouts, trying to stop them.  

“I really should go” Vanya tries to get out of the kitchen, and while her sister screams “No!”, Diego raises his arms to the ceiling, “Finally!”

“Diego, stop!” Allison is on the verge of crying.

“What is going on here?!”

The four of them turn and find Pogo standing in the doorway, slamming the cane on the floor, trying to make them shut up. “You may not share the same blood, but you are siblings and I demand that you treat each other with respect!”

“You’re right, Pogo.” Luther is the first to answer, and Diego laughs sarcastic, shaking his head, “You know what? I’m out of here” he states, then leaves the room disappearing at the top of the stairs.

“I’m really sorry, Pogo.” Vanya speaks up, “It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have come back.”

“This is your home, and always will be, Miss Vanya.” His stare softens, and she can see again the friend who used to keep her company while all her other brothers were busy with training.

“Exactly” Allison circles her shoulder with an arm, bringing her closer. “It doesn’t matter the things we do or say, you are my sister, and I love you.”

Vanya’s eyes widen.

_I love you._

She suddenly remembers Leonard telling her that for the first time.

_I love you._

She forces herself to think about something else.

So she asks, “Where’s Klaus?”

“Ah” Pogo intertwines his hand over the cane. “I think Master Klaus got himself into a room where he is not allowed to be. Speaking of which, I should go take care of that.” Before leaving the kitchen, he stares at Vanya’s face. “If you ever need anything for those bruises, come to me later, I should have the right ointment.”

Something in his eyes makes her shudder, as if he knew everything.

“Thanks” she mutters. Her head starts to throb in pain, to the point that she asks Allison for an aspirin.

_I have to take my pills._

“I’ll take care of it” says Luther, going to the bathroom to look through the medicines.

“Hey” her sister’s voice is soft, as a lullaby, while she helps her sit on a chair and hands her a glass of water. Vanya wonders if that’s the tone she uses with Claire. “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should rest a bit, or maybe Luther is right and you should go see a doctor.”

“No, it’s fine” she replies, leaning on the table with her arms and hiding her face in them. “It’s just an headache, I haven’t taken my pills yet.”

“Pills? You mean… the ones that dad used to give to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you should be taking them?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”  Vanya asks, lifting her head with furrowed eyebrow, but Allison doesn’t have time to reply as they suddenly hear a sound similar to a finger snap.

It’s a strange noise, one she hasn’t heard in a long time; it’s Five’s.

 

* * *

 

 

Number Five hates that his body has gone back to the way it once was.

People keep mistaking him for a kid, and because of it he hasn’t managed to find anything out about the society that produces the ocular prosthesis. He’s going back tomorrow, accompanied by one of his siblings, probably Klaus, as he is the only one nuts enough to follow him without asking any questions.

And Five doesn’t like questions, they just slow him down.

Once he reaches the academy, he dematerializes from the yard just to reappear inside, with a snap. As soon as he touches the ground, he can hear the voices from the kitchen suddenly die, in a heavy silence.

He gets closer and enters, at first blinded by the light, too strong compared to the dark hallway, and once his sight is back he can’t help staring at the other girl in the room besides Allison.

_Vanya_.

At the beginning, when he sees her, relief unleashes within him, because he spent most part of the afternoon worrying about her. This, until he had arrived to Meritech: from that moment on, he had done his best to only concentrate on finding who that eye belongs to.

Then his eyes land on the ice covering her cheek, her lip swollen and dark where it split. He tightens his fists along his sides.

Their stares meet and her eyes widen: she gets up and lets the ice fall to the floor, where it makes contact with a cracking sound.

“Five…” she murmurs, as if she couldn’t really believe it.

“I’ll leave you alone” Allison rises and gets out the room, and when Luther comes back and hands Vanya an aspirin, he hurries to follow her out, so that the two of them remain alone in the kitchen. She fills a glass with water and swallow the medicine.

“What happened?” he demands.

“I was robbed.”

“Bullshit.”

She looks taken aback at that.

“No, that’s not true” she quickly denies, and tries to steer the conversation towards another subject. “How did you come back? And why only now?”

“It’s a long story…” he answers, staring carefully at her. He knows she’s lying, he’s sure of it despite all these years apart, but decides to drop it for the moment. “There are more important things to talk about. Follow me.”

He’s fast to leave the kitchen, but speeds up only when he’s sure to hear her footsteps behind him. He quickly climbs the stairs and reaches his old bedroom. It’s the first time he goes in there since he’s been back, with the peeling walls still covered in writings, his bed made and untouched for seventeen years, every single detail unchanged.

He gets close to the window and peers between the shutters, making sure no one is nearby. It’s something stupid to do, but habits are hard to break.

Then he sits on his old bed, while Vanya keeps standing on the threshold.

“Close the door.” He tells her.

“Why are we here?” She asks him, but accomplishes.

“I’ve decided you are the only one I can trust.”

There’s a full minute of silence, while the two of them stare at each other. Five tries not to dwell too much on her terribly purple and yellow cheek.

“Why me?” she asks in the end.

_Because we have always been united, you and me. Because I know you would never betray me._

He doesn’t have time for that. _Only eight days, only eight days…_

“Because you are ordinary” he says instead, and as soon as these words leave his mouth, he knows they are the wrong ones and regrets them. He tries not to see the way her body reacts to them.

“Because you will listen to me” he tries again, gentler, and she nods to herself.

 “Okay” she answers finally.

“You know what I’ve found in the future?”

“No”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He hates the way his voice sounds weak. “The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

She watches him for a few moments not uttering a word, then she opts for sitting heavily down next to him on the bed, sighing gravely.

At first she only stares ahead, but then her eyes move to him.

“Why didn’t you come back before?”

“You really think it’s that easy? That I didn’t try to do everything possible to come back to my family, to you?”

Her expressions softens  “Sorry, I know you did.”

She looks away, and then asks, “If you aged in the future, why do you have the body of a thirteen years old?”

“I’ve told you already, it’s not so simple to time travel” Five tries his best not to sound annoyed by that question, “I must have made some mistakes in the equations…”

“It must have been horrible… all that time alone.”

He holds her gaze. “I wasn’t alone. There was someone else with me…”

“Someone else…?”

_Dolores._

Oh, how he misses her. He suddenly remembers exactly where to go to find her again.   
He jerks up, causing Vanya to startle, as she asks him “Where are you going?”

“There’s something I have to do.”

“Wait! We’ve barely talked!”

He reaches the door and closes his fingers around the doorknob , before he stops and turns around towards his sister. She’s still sitting on his bed, with an expressions that seems to imply she doesn’t really believe all he’s told her.

Maybe she thinks he’s crazy.

“I’ll be back soon” he tells her, and she sighs but nods, confused. “When I’m back, I’ll be ready to hear the truth on what happened to you” he points to her face. “And on _Leonard_.”

Her eyes widen and she flinches at the name: this only increase that bad feeling that is gradually curling up in his stomach.  

Whatever it is that scares her, he’s planning on taking measures about it.   
Despite her being physically older than him, living so many years more than she has makes her look like a child to his eyes, like the Number Seven who used to play the violin alone in her bedroom and who was assaulted by nightmares every time she closed her eyes.

He wishes he could cross again the room and go to her, comfort her, but as already said, he has no time for anything else. The apocalypse is coming, and he is the only one who can stop it.

 

* * *

 

 

Klaus sneaks around his father’s office as if it is his personal revenge, brushing the silky curtains on the threshold with his fingers. He watches Reginald’s painting on the wall at the end of the room, shaking his head as an ironical laugh escapes him.

_You’ve always been so eccentric, dad, even more than me._

The candelabras on the wooden cabinet are out and for the first time in years the windows are open: when his father was still alive, that office had always seemed to him dark and bleak, as if it was underground.

On the desk there are still some animal skulls scattered, yellowed papers covered in notes and ancient lamps. Klaus approaches the closets and starts rummaging through each of them, looking for money. After all his father made him go through in his childhood, the nights spent inside the mausoleum with the only presence of the spirits of the dead, a little reward is the least he deserves. 

He shoves everything shining inside his pockets, overloading them.

_Let’s call it… an advance of my inheritance._

He sits on a chair behind the desk and rests his feet upon it, looking around.   
_You really are dead, uh? Otherwise, I could have never stepped inside here._

“Get down”

Luther appears on the door, followed by Allison.

Klaus rolls his eyes, but gets up anyway, “Yeah, yeah, easy brother, I was just about to leave.”

He gets closer to the entrance, “Allison, you’re always beautiful” he tells her, then moves his eyes on Luther, “You… well, you can work on it.”

His sister lets out a little giggle, with her curls that waves down her back, but Number One stops him with a firm hand against his chest that is enough to take the breath out of him for a moment.

“Jeez, you trained a lot up there”

“Drop it.”

“What?”

“Now.”

“Alright, alright, no need to get all hot and bothered” he gets rid of some gold-plated coins, that roll on the floor. “Happy?”

“Very.”

 Klaus leaves the room, and a someone emerges from the shadows.

It’s Pogo, who approaches him: “I am sure that every possession that does not belong to you is still in that office, isn’t it, Master Klaus?”

“Pogo, _tu quoque?!_ You’re hurting me” he brings a hand to his chest dramatically, and the other to his forehead, arching his back and half-closing his eyes.

When Pogo keeps looking at him seriously, though, Klaus mumbles “Yeah, yeah, thanks to Luther everything is at his place”

“This reassures me deeply” he replies, but doesn’t change his expression, in a way that suggests he is not entirely convinced by what he’s heard.

Klaus quickly walks away, turning the corner, and draws out from the back of his pants a huge ornate box with pearl inlay. He reaches the closer window, that is just above a trash can, where he troves the content of his prize, a red book and some papers.

  
He goes back to his room, rests the box on a cabinet while he puts on his shoes.

He’s already thinking about how much he can make by pawning it, when a huge bang roars in the mansion and he can feel the walls shake.

 

* * *

 

 

**[12 minutes before]**

Diego’s room is right next to Five’s, and his door is open when he and Vanya enters it, as well as when Five gets out in a rush, running downstairs and reaching the hall, then leaving the house.

It’s not long after that Vanya comes out too, shutting the door behind her back and leaning against it, closing her eyelids without realizing Diego is staring at her.

She brings a hand to her head, squeezing her eyes, as if in pain.   
Had that night never happened, had she never screamed at him those things on that bridge, Diego would go to her to help her lay down, would look restlessly for whoever had reduced her like that, but now… what would be the point?

She hates them, hates _him,_ she has made that clear enough, and he can’t help but wonder what the hell she is doing there.

As if she could read his mind, Vanya slowly opens her eyes and meets his. Diego feels a hot rage finding its way inside him, he can feel the fingers of his hands closing and uncurling, tingling with the desire of hitting something.

She moves away from the wall and takes some steps ahead, then halts half way; maybe she expects him to close the distance, but Diego turns around and goes back to his room.

“Diego!” he hears her calling him, but he doesn’t stop.

After some seconds Vanya enters his room, with her cheeks and neck red, like when they were kids and spent the summer afternoons running after one another.

“Diego, I…” she says no more, and has the decency of looking ashamed.

“What Vanya? You what?” his voice is furious.

“I’m sorry!” she tells him, with watering eyes. “I’m really sorry”

Outside the window, the dark sky thunders and lights up with flashes, preluding to a storm.

“I don’t get you” he replies, his tone calmer but not less enraged.

“I’m sorry, I don’t-“ he breath trembles. A single tear rolls down her face, and the first raindrops start hitting the glass with soft thuds.

“Speak, Vanya!”

“I don’t think those things!” she blurts out.

The rain becomes thicker and stronger, resonates all above the rooftop.

“I don’t really mean what I said that night, I don’t mean anything of what I told all of you.”

“You don’t? Then why, Vanya?” Diego is confused, but he’s also terribly angry.

Why pushing them all away, reducing Allison to tears, insulting them with the lowest and most painful blows?

Why did she ignore all their texts and calls, why did she never try to reach out and apologize to them before Five came back?

She opens her mouth, as if to say something, but then closes it again and shakes her head.

“You don’t know what to say, uh?” Diego sends her a disgusted look. “Wanna know why? ‘Cause you have no excuse for what you did”

He moves past her, slamming into her shouder, and Vanya turns, catching his wrist; “Wait, please, wait”

“No, Vanya!” he gets free of her hold. “You can’t treat all of us like shit for no reason, and then come back and pretend everything’s fine.”

“Diego, I can’t…” she stops herself again, and seems to have an internal battle.

For the first time, Diego takes in the bags under her eyes, the bruises placed not only on her cheek, but also on her wrists, beneath the shirt’s border; he can glimpse others hidden by the soft, silky scarf she wears around her neck.

Sure, a robbery can become extremely violent, but why are some bruises fading while others are still forming?

“Vanya…” his voice becomes suddenly dangerous, his fists closing.

She notices that and seems to panic, her lips parting and her eyes widening.   
Before Diego can stop her, Vanya mumbles a quick “I have to go” and flees the room.

“Vanya!” Diego follows her while she runs down the stairs, skipping some of the steps. “Vanya, stop!”

He manages to get a hold of her elbow, blocking her, and she is screaming to let her go while wriggling to get free.

Allison and Luther come out from their father’s office with worried faces, asking what’s going on.

The storm rages outside the house, the bangs of the thunders becoming louder, the flashes whiter.

“Vanya!” Diego screams one last time, before the door slams open and crashes against the walls nearby with a loud noise, making the whole house shake.

 

  


  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is also important: i wanted to let you know that the reason why i made that scene with Klaus in the office on a different point in the story from the tv show, is that i need it to take place in this chapter, otherwise the story would have no sense (as you'll see in the future chapters).  
> Thanks again, I hope you enjoyed it!  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okaaay, so, I am very sorry it took me so long to update, I know I had promised to do it during the weekend, but university is being pretty rough right now.  
> Also, the chapter was actually ready (in italian) on saturday night, but it takes me a lot to translate it.  
> Anyway, there you go!  
> I don't know when the next one will be out, but I'll try my best!  
> Enjoy!

_The storm rages outside the house, the bangs of the thunders becoming louder, the flashes whiter._

_“Vanya!” Diego screams one last time, before the door slams open and crashes against the walls nearby with a loud noise, making the whole house shake._  


A gelid gust of wind blows inside the house, crawling through her shirt and ruffling her hair in front of her face.

Vanya barely makes out two dark silhouettes on the threshold with huge masks on their heads and their arms loaded with guns, before a hiss brushes her left ear, accompanied by the sound of a shot.

Diego throws himself above her, pinning her to the ground and pressing her beneath his body, and she doesn’t even register the pain of hitting her head, because the only thing she can think of are their black shoes slowly advancing in the academy that she can still see from under the couch they are behind.

Suddenly, all around her is a hail of bullets, and the rumor is so deafening and strong that she has to bring her hands to her ears to cover them, closing her eyes.

“Vanya, are you okay?!” Diego’s voice is very close to her, and she just nods, while she keeps thinking that no, it’s not possible that _this_ is happening too, that she has already been through too much for a single day.

However, besides her she can feel Diego shift and lean from a side of the couch, ripping a knife from his uniform and aiming. She doesn’t see him throw, but she hears the shots dropping and someone – a woman’s voice- slightly shout.

When he was a child, he rarely missed his target, and Vanya can only imagine how good he must have become. She opens her eyes and watches around, and she can see Luther gripping the railing of the second floor and jumping in the emptiness of the air, landing in the middle of the room.

With a shout, he throws himself against the other person, body against body, kicking and punching.  
Allison follows him quickly, attacking the woman who still has a knife coming out from her thigh.

Both she and Diego know that they could never make it alone.  
Klaus appears from the door of his room, close to the stairs, and is about to ask ‘What’s going on?’ when a bullet misses him only for few inches, and he lets out a too much high-pitched scream.

“Klaus!” Diego calls him, signaling him to get down quickly. “Take Vanya out of here!”

She looks at him in surprise. _Only fifteen minutes ago he was pretty much kicking me out._

Number Four mimics ‘Vanya’ with his lips, or maybe he actually says her name and she just can’t hear him with all that noise. Diego, next to her, raises his head over the couch to check the situation, glances at her one last time, and finally throws himself into the melee, drawing out numerous knives –too many, where the heck does he even keep them?- and sends them to the air, bending them at physically impossible curvatures.

Vanya looks at the three of her siblings that are fighting, then turns around and finds Klaus crouching down next to her. It’s been years since she last saw him, and it’s a hard blow to take in.

_What happened to you?_ She can’t help thinking, observing his dark bags under the eyes, his weathered face, his thinness…

But maybe he’s wondering the same thing about her, while he watches her.

Klaus is the faster between the two of them to recover and he takes her hand, mumbling something she can’t hear. He looks around,  as if waiting for the right moment, and when suddenly every shot ceases, leaving space only to the sound of kicks and punches, Klaus snaps forward and drags her with him, running into the hallway on their right.

Someone notices them , shouts something, and Klaus starts to run even faster, while they zigzag between the columns that hold up the house in marble rows.  
“Everything’s fine, Vanya” he tells her, and she remembers when Ben used to whisper her the same words after being scolded by their father.

“Hey!”

Vanya turns around, and at the end of the hallway she can see one of the figures: he’s wearing a dark suit that matches his necktie, a yellow and blu mask of a… bear?

Klaus notices him too. “Shit!” he shouts, dragging her to the room on their left just as the other starts taking aim at them with his weapon.

Vanya has barely the time to see Diego reach him and restrain him, before she disappears from their sight.  

 “Okay, okay, okay” Klaus keeps murmuring reassuring words, while he pulls her in one room after the other. He opens a door and closes it behind them with a thud.

While he suddenly stops and beats himself on his forehead with his fist, Vanya takes a look around: the walls are covered in shelves and bookcases, where different books are perfectly arranged.  
There are couches and mahogany tables free of papers or novels, soft seats and turned off lamps. At the center of the room there is a huge globe that shows each countries, a magnifying glass at its feet and the plug to lit up the red lights along the mountain ranges.  

They are in the academy library, the same room in which Vanya started to learn how to play the violin. Sometimes, while her siblings were busy running laps, doing push-ups and other exercises, Pogo used to bring her there and told her to sit wherever she wanted, then he moved with a long metallic stepladder along the shelves until he reached the music section.

He would take out a tome about a music genre or a particular artist and read it aloud, telling her to interrupt him if she didn’t understand or didn’t know a word.

Other times, he would give her empty sheet music to fill with notes, to help her memorize the easiest work to reproduce.

Klaus grabs a chair and uses it to block the door from inside, even if the sound of the battle isn’t getting closer.

_Diego must have managed to stop him¸_ Vanya thinks.  
In the distance, she can still hear crashes, things breaking and shootings, and she prays in her heart that her siblings are fine.

“Okay, this is really not the best way to meet again, but welcome back.”

“ _Klaus._ ”

He seems frantic and keeps looking around, searching for a way out. But she knows that place as the back of her hand.

“Come” she tells him, and hurries along the bookcases in the middle of the huge library.  She slips behind a corner, hidden to anyone who is not familiar with that place, and she drags him behind her as she moves towards a dark wooden door, almost black.

She struggles to open it, with the handle already orange and brown due to the rust, but Klaus helps her to push it down.

“Where are we?” he asks her.

Vanya is not surprised by the fact that he does not know part of their own house: the academy is immense, a lost mansion on the outskirts of town, so outside it that it’s almost on the countryside.

The room they step in is completely dark and cramped, and she can hear a whimper escaping from Klaus behind her. She knows what he is seeing, and it takes her a while to find the switch.  
When she flips it, her brothers loudly exhales in relief.

Along the walls there are shelves filled with empty wooden crates, old metallic pans and pots, ladles, and other kitchen utensils. There’s the smell of stagnation and mold, as it is probably years since anyone has stepped in there.

“It’s the old storage” she answers him, trying to keep the volume to a minimum. “This is where they used to keep stocks” she throws a glance to the old thermostat –definitely broken- on a pale wall.

Compared to the rest of the house, perfectly kept clean and in order, that only place is enough to give the idea of decay and abandonment.  
They slowly advance, trying not to trip over the boxes scattered on the floor, covering their faces with their forearms to shelter them from the spider webs.

“This house really suited dad” Klaus murmurs behind her, “cold, and full of secrets.”

Vanya absentmindedly nods, and finally turns right and reaches an emergency door.  
“I’m gonna turn off the light” she warns her brother, and he gets just a little closer.

Then, she lays an hand on the red panic bar, and flips the switch.

Their breath becomes heavy in the blackness that surrounds them, and she quickly press the bar and gets out in the spring night.  
It’s the 24th of march, yet the air is still bitter, fresh from the storm that raged few moments before, and that now is reduced to only small and less frequent drops.

The heavy clouds tower above them and move fast in the wind. She turns towards Klaus, and then she hears shootings coming from the other side of the house.

Klaus comes closer and takes her hand again, “let’s get away” he tells her, and they rush to hide in the trees of their huge backyard, until they reach the black ironed gate.

He helps her to climb over and then does the same. When they are both on the other side, they stop.

There is a moment of utter silence, until she breaks it: “We can’t leave them here.”

“Vanya” he sighs and gets close to her, glancing nervously at the house as if to make sure no one is coming out of it. “I don’t like the idea of leaving the dirty work to the others either, but neither of us would really be helpful to them.”

“But-“

“We would be nothing more than a burden, and you know it as well; I can talk to the dead and you can play the violin, unless you are keeping a gun in those lovely boots of yours, there is nothing we can do.”

She watches one last time the mansion, before she looks away.

“Listen, Diego didn’t stop being an asshole for the first time in his life just because he enjoys watching us run.” He tightens the pink-feathered scarf he’s wearing around his neck, as if it could really protect him from the cold when he’s actually half-naked, with only a leather jacket over his bare chest. “C’mon, I’m taking you home.”

Vanya bites her lip and feels her eyes starting to sting when she’s hit by that feeling of being useless she’s had since she was a kid. In the end, she nods, “Alright.”

They reach the side of the road and decide to pass through the short-cut that twists along the corn fields and pops up to the corner that is only few meters away from the metro.  
They look right and left before they cross, and finally they come near a small ditch, that they leave behind with a jump, landing in the middle of the green and tall grass, still wet due to the storm. It soaks them, and Vanya shivers when some drops slip down the neck of her shirt, all the way down her spine.

Klaus, laying on his back, watches the stars for a second, and Vanya is sure she can hear him talk alone and murmur “I know, I know, I’m just tired” to the empty air.

They get up and quickly crawl in the blades of grass, and when they suddenly can’t hear shouts or shots anymore, they wonder if it’s really over or if they just got already too far.

They coast along a tree-lined path, and Klaus lets out a girlish scream when a dark spider falls on his hand. He shakes it to make it fall, then he speeds up.

“Of course I’ve noticed, I’m not blind” he grumbles ahead of her, starling her and making her stop in her tracks, believing he’s talking to her, but then he goes on, “no, thanks, It’s better if I mind my own business.”

Vanya’s eyes widen and she can feel her head spinning, while she starts thinking that she cannot handle this thing as well right now, that she can’t take care of her brother while they are lost in a field in the middle of the night.

_Yet, he didn’t seem to be high when we left._

“Why don’t _you_ ask her? Maybe it’s not that bad” he says. “Yeah, I know you’re dead, but you just need to _try harder_.”

Vanya watches his back moving away towards the street. “Klaus.” She calls him.

“Yes, little sister?”

“Who… who are you talking to?”

“Oh.” He suddenly freezes.

He turns around and looks at her for the first time with such an intense stare, so desperate and destroyed, that Vanya might start crying without even knowing why.

“With myself” he answers with a sad smile.

Vanya wants to ask him more, but she sees how he notices her face, her swollen and painful cheek, the dry and hard lip where it broke, and as he says nothing about it, she decides to do the same.

They resume walking, but this time Klaus slows down significantly, and she finds him at her side until they reach the end of the tree-lined path.

With the night so dark and dense, everything around her is reduced to black shadows swaying in the wind, and the full moon above her is visible only at times, covered in cirrostratus and frayed clouds that look as if made up by a translucent and continuous veil.

“Maybe we should call a taxi” she tells him, as soon as they reach the street and start walking in the direction of the metro.

“With what money? We’re the poor people of the family, you and me” he answers, and despite the bitterness in his voice, a small laugh escapes Vanya’s mouth.

“And you have enough money for the metro?” she asks him.

“No, but no one ever really takes night shift to guard it”

“What? That’s not possible.”

“Well, _technically,_ they should. But c’mon, let’s be honest, no officer would rather take care of the scum of the city when they could just stay home and watch tv in bed”

“Jeez, is it really that bad?”

“Let’s just say someone like you’d better not go there alone at night”

“Someone like me?”

“A girl.”

“Oh, great”  she groans, watching the entrance of the metro: there are two lateral stone walls painted blue, that under the light of the streetlamps look almost green, a chipped handrail, and the steps of the stairs rapidly descend into a dark throat.

“Oh, don’t you worry, Vanya!” he tells her, acting heroic and nonchalant as he links their arms and they start to go down the stairs. “You dear big bro Klaus, here, will be more than enough to protect you from any danger, starting from maniacs to the even worse ticket inspectors.”

She rolls her eyes, but still smiles a bit.

“Not from spiders, though” he adds. “You’ll have to take care of them.”

“Ew, no way” she answers, as they arrive below.

The lights are flickering from the neon lamp anchored to the ceiling and the coldness starts to dig in her bones. She tightens the scarf around her neck and regrets not taking a jacket with ever in addition to her simple shirt.

Klaus offers to give her his own, but she stares skeptically to his bared torso, “No, thanks, you probably need it more than I do.”

Vanya looks around and notices people curled in their sleeping bags next to the walls, other sockless or shoeless with closed eyes, other more fighting for a hat, as the game tug-of-war, until it breaks in half.

Someone is observing them from afar, in the shadows, and she can only see his eyes glimmering.  
She shivers, and unintentionally steps closer to her brother.

Klaus notices the situation as well, and Vanya admits that an half naked boy, with a black long skirt that reaches his knees and a pink-feathered scarf does catch the attention.

However, Klaus does not seem to be too much worried about himself, and he wraps an arm around her shoulder as they reach the turnstiles. He helps her get past one, and then he follows.  
Together, they get close to the platform that will get them to the street that meets hers.

They have to wait more than they would if it was day, but after a while their subway arrives and they quickly get in. There aren’t too many people at that time, but late-night subways take longer as they make more stops, so it will take them a good twenty minutes to arrive.

They look for a place in which to sit, but if on one side there are muscled men with angry faces –that they totally do not want to be seen from- on the other side there are homeless with long and gray beards, a smell definitely not good, and numerous bottles of alcohol that roll on the floor with every movement.

They choose to stand next to the door.

They stay next to each other, and when a man with dirty and dragged clothes, a can of beer in one hand, eyes her too much, Klaus brings her closer and puts himself between them, hiding her from sight.

Finally, they reach their stop, without  meeting any inspectors.  
They jump over the turnstiles again and come back in the surface. Despite the smog, the smell of the city it’s definitely better than whatever was down there.

“What time is it?” Vanya asks him.

“Ah, sister dear, do I look like I could afford a watch?”

Vanya rolls her eyes but lets it drop, and as soon as they start walking towards the building of her apartment, she wonders what will happen now with Leonard.

She is not expecting anything good, but she’s too tired to rebel or to go back, she just wants a roof over her head, a warm bath and a bed in which to sleep. They arrive in front of her door and stares at the bell without daring to ring it.

“Okay, before you go” Klaus starts, stopping her with a hand on his shoulder. “Was it Leonard?” he points to her face.

The question takes her by surprise, so that at first she does not reply but she just stares at him with her lips disclosed to form a soundless ‘O’.

“What?” she asks in the end, because she really has no idea on what to say.

“Honestly, Vanya, we aren’t trying to lecture you, we are just worried”

She furrows her eyebrows, “ _We_?”

“ _I”_ he corrects himself, but the he shakes his head as if that is not important. “Seriously, I don’t want to send you in there if it was him.”

Vanya always liked Klaus’s approach to important questions. Straightforward and honest.

“No, Klaus.” She answers, but she can easily read through her lie as well.

He’s about to argue, when the door suddenly opens and Leonard appears on the threshold with a worried expression, seeming to be so destroyed that for a moment Vanya wonders what happened.

“Vanya!” he exclaims, running down the steps and coming to her. He brings his arms around her in a hug and she freezes, widening her eyes. He holds her with strength,  but he does not hurt her.

_What’s going on?_

“My God, Vanya!” he scoots away to look at her in her face.  He seems to notice only now her bruises, her split lip, her swollen cheek… “What happened to you??”

His voice cracks and some tears spill down to his chin.  He moves his eyes to her brother, “Thank you so much for bringing her home, thank you with all my heart”

Klaus stares at him and then at her, trying to understand if he really misinterpreted or if Leonard is just a very good actor. He can’t seem to decide.

“Come Vanya, you surely need to rest.” Leonard takes her hand, not violently, but as he used to do when they started dating and would walk along the streets at night.

She panics at the idea of being alone with him again, but when she glances at her bother and sees how already destroyed by life he is, she knows she can’t drag him down with her.

“Thanks, Klaus” she tells him instead, with a little smile.

He’s about to say something, but then he changes his mind. “Don’t worry. Call, if you ever need anything.” He thinks about what he has just said, and then he adds: “Actually, it’s better if you call Allison. Or Diego. Definitely more responsible than I am.”

“Thanks again!” Leonard moves more towards the door, still holding her hand.

Vanya and Klaus’ eyes lock, and only when she nods he does turn around and go back to the subway.

* * *

 

Vanya is not really sure what’s going on, exactly.

She expected that Leonard would rudely drag her in the house as soon as Klaus turned the corner, but things went differently . He took her wrist, but with kindness, and with a soft voice he said, “Come, let’s go inside”, while he moved towards the white door.

At that point, she thought it was because he didn’t want anyone on the street to witness his outburst, but once inside, with the door closed behind their backs, he kept asking where she had been all that time, if her family was okay and if she had any problem to get to the academy.

_Maybe he’s just mocking me_ , she thinks, as soon as she enters the kitchen. All it’s as she left it, expect for the bedroom door that is not locked anymore. _Maybe he wants me to believe everything is fine._

“You got out from the window, didn’t you?”

She nods. _Here we are. He’s about to start._

But instead he takes her face in his hands and brings her closer to himself, as if to check everything is fine, and stares at her with fierceness and worry that she almost believe are true. “Vanya, what were you thinking? You could have hurt yourself badly!”

She is left speechless, can’t even think about a possible answer.

“I’m sorry” she says, in the end.

“No, _I_ am sorry, I should never have locked you inside. Can you forgive me?”

_Forgive him?_

“Please, Vanya” he grasps her hands, squeezing them a little and tracing little circles on the backs.

“Y-yes” she replies, not really believing what she is hearing.

He keeps mumbling apologies, telling her he’s going to prepare a hot bath with the perfumed salts she likes so much and a cup of tea with some biscuits, but she can’t take it anymore, she’d rather have him punish her right now than later, and she asks: “Aren’t you angry?”

“Angry?” he repeats in disbelief, as if the idea alone of being angry is absurd. “How could I? It was all my fault”

“I… I don’t understand” she looks around confused, searching for any clues that might explain his strange behavior.

Leonard sighs and takes her hand, inviting her to sit down on the couch and doing the same, “Vanya… When I came back home and didn’t find you… I thought you were gone. Forever. It was terrible. You can’t even imagine how guilty I felt, and how scared i was…. I don’t wanna lose you, Vanya. The last two years were a mistake, please…” he takes a break, and his blue-iced eyes seem to water. “ _Please,_ let me make up to it.”

An alarm rings inside her, telling her not to trust him, to get up and leave. But just as the first time, she is deaf to that sound.

“I love you, Vanya. Please, forgive me.”

Vanya nods.

And then she smiles.

* * *

 

Five arrives in front of the academy with Dolores in his arms, a white shirt with black pois on and a huge plastic smile on her face.

“Of course I would never leave you behind” he tells her.

The gravel cracks under his feet, and the wind suddenly gelid brushes his legs left exposed by his shorts. It ruffles his hair and while he watches the veiled moon, Five knows a day is already gone, and now there are only seven until the apocalypse.

When he reaches the door, he finds it slightly hanging from the hinges and ajar. He moves Dolores behind himself, while he opens it with a squeak. The house seems silent, and Number Five barely has time to teleport himself before a shadow lands exactly where he was a moment before.

He gets behind it, ready to strike, when he realizes it’s just Diego.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asks him.

“Five?” Diego frowns and rise, putting a blade he had drawn out back on his belt. “Where have you been?”

“Irrelevant” he answers, laying Dolores on the floor.

“What’s that thing?”

“It’s not a _thing_ ” he snaps, but then he notices the glass table shattered on the red carpet, pieces of a vase next to it. Luther and Allison arrive from the other room, as the probably heard their voices, and Five sees bruises on all of them.

“What happened?”

“We were attacked” Allison answers, getting closer.

“Attacked? By who?”

“We don’t know” says Luther, while Diego huffs: “By two masked idiots.”

“What do you mean, ‘masked’?”

“They had these huge masks like… cartoon animals, but totally macabre” Allison rubs her arms, probably due to the cold breeze that keeps coming in from the broken door.

_Hazel and Cha Cha_ , he realizes horrified. _They are trying to prevent me from stopping the apocalypse._

“And Vanya?” Five immediately asks.

“Klaus brought her away.” Diego draws another knife out from his suit and sticks it in the parquet fiercely. Luther scolds him, but he just scrolls his shoulder, “It’s not like it can get much worse than this.”

“Brought her where?” Number Five does not give too much attention to the bickering of his brothers.

“To her place” Allison steps in, “where else?”

“To _Leonard_ ” Diego pretty much spits that name out.

“Why that tone?” Luther stares at him, arms crossed.

“I don’t trust him” Diego points a finger at him. “I don’t think you realized in which condition she came here. Someone _hit_ her. If you want to keep believing to the fairytale of thieves, do it, but I won’t.”

“You think it was Leonard??” Allison exclaims, bringing a hand to her mouth.

“Who else?”

“C’mon, you can’t know that” Luther replies, but Five immediately says “I don’t trust him either”

“Finally, someone with a brain!” Diego raises his arms to the sky, exasperated.

“We need to get to her, now!” Allison reaches the coatrack and puts a jacket on her shoulder, but Number One stops her. “If it really is Leonard’s fault, I have no idea of letting you close to him.”

She roughly moves away, “We are talking about Vanya here, not me! We can’t leave her alone with that guy if that’s what’s really going on!”

“Allison is right” Five states, and at the thought of his sister alone again, stuck at home with that man, he can feel his fists closing along his sides and his blood boiling with rage, “We don’t have time to waste”

And even if the end of the world is coming, this time Five knows very well where the priority lays.

“We need a plan, we can’t just show up and take her away!” Luther objects.

“The plan is very easy” Diego replies. “We get in, kick his ass, and come back here with Vanya.”

“Diego, at least _try_ to reason!”

“I like his plan” says Five.

“Alright, enough!” Allison raises her voice and her hands, trying to shut them up. “I’m gonna call her, if anything sounds even slightly weird we go there immediately, otherwise we’ll take some time to make a plan.”

Luther immediately agrees, _quelle surprise_ , and while Diego hesitates before he nods, Five would just like to tell them all to fuck off and go out on his own.

Number Three takes out her phone and dials their sister’s number, waiting anxious.

She puts it on speaker, so that everyone can hear it ringing.

_Tuu-tuu._

_Tuu-tuu._

_Tuu-tuu._

_Tuu-tu-_

“Yeah, Allison? Is everything okay?” Vanya’s voice comes out serene from the phone.

“Vanya, hey!” Number Three never had any problems with making up excuses. “Yeah, we just wanted to know if you had gotten home safe and sound, Klaus is not back yet.”

There a few moments of silence. “Damn, I’m an horrible sister” Vanya murmurs from the other side. “I am sorry, I should have called you and asked if everything was okay. I am fine now, I’m at home with Leonard, but he’s in the bathroom now.”

“Oh” Allison takes time. “We are okay too, luckily. We still don’t know who those guys were or what they wanted though.”

“Yeah, that was terrifying.

She can hear a door opening inside Vanya’s house.

“So… Are you sure everything’s okay?” Allison stresses on the word ‘sure’.

“Sure, why shouldn’t it be?”

“Who are you talking to?” she can hear in the background, and Leonard voice is not as menacing as they thought it’d be.

“Allison” their sister replies, but before she can get back to the conversation, Leonard’s voice becomes closer. “Listen, why don’t you say goodbye to your brothers and give me the phone? I made you a surprise, but we need to go.”

“Go? Where?”

“Vanya” there’s a sort of warning in the way Allison calls her name, as if to tell her not to trust him and to keep the phone close by.

But on the other side, the only thing they hear is a “No, Leonard, wait, I still have to say by-” before she can finish. The line goes dead and the room falls into silence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked this chapter! If you did, kudos and comments are always appreciated!  
> Until next time!  
> Machi <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, I really have no excuses... It took me more than two weeks to upload this, and I'm really sorry, it just takes SO much to translate it >.<  
> I really hope you will enjoy this.  
> I have to be honest, not much really happens in this chapter, and i also had to split it in half because it was becoming too long, but i promise that more interactions between the siblings will come!  
> Thanks for reading!

“Leonard!” Vanya is fast on her feet from the couch she was laying on, trying to take the phone back from her boyfriend’s hand. “Give it back, they must be worrying!”

“Worrying?” Leonard stares at her as if she was crazy. “Vanya, we are talking about your family here. You know, the ones who never treated you the way you deserved?”

She half-closes her dark eyes and looks at him offended, trying once again to reach for the phone, but he pushes it in the pocket on the back of his trousers. “You know very well that it’s true.”

From the greenish blind beyond the window, the pale and orange light of a streetlamp breaks in. The night is dark and the city is silent.

“Stop it!” Vanya steps back, moving towards the bedroom, but he gently takes her wrist.

“No, sorry, you are right” he sighs and brings a hand to his forehead, as if he was in pain. “I’m sorry, really, I exaggerated.”

He gets a little closer to her and takes her chin between two fingers, raising it to meet his eyes, “I just… I just want to do something nice to make up to all my mistakes… We need to leave now, though.”

Vanya suddenly remembers him saying something like that some minutes before. “To go where?” she asks.

He smiles and taps with a finger on the tip of her nose, “if I tell you it won’t be a surprise anymore.”

_This can’t be true_ , Vanya thinks, because only few hours ago he was shoving her behind a door to lock her inside and not letting her go.

She moves a strand of hair that escaped her bun out of her face, and brushes the folds of her light blue shirt to gain some time, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea…” she starts. “Maybe it’s better if we wait some days, take our time…”

“No, no” he hurries and shakes his hands as if to stop her. “We can’t wait, we need to go now.”

“Leonard, whatever it is you have in mind, it will not magically disappear.” She tells him, trying to talk some sense into him. “It’s late, and I’m tired. We can’t hit the road right now.”

“Honey,” he watches her with intensity and speaks in a soft tone. “You don’t understand. It’s really important to me.” He brings her hands to his lips and leaves a kiss there. “Trust me, Vanya. It will be worth it.”

She sighs and looks away, trying to find a way to convince him to stay. In the end, she’s too tired to keep arguing. “Alright” she states “What should I take with me? And how long will we be gone?”

“Oh!” his expression visibly lightens up. “Take only what you need, we’ll only be away for few days. Get a heavy jacket though, it might get cold at night.”

Leonard tells her his suitcase is already packed, so he goes to load it in the car while she starts getting hers ready.

She chooses to take a wool sweater, underwear, heavy socks and trousers, some towels and a book. She fixes the scarf better around her neck and puts on a jacket  that’s a little tight along her sides. She ties the shoelaces of her brown and soft boots, and finally presses her hair beneath a grey beanie.

Leonard urges her to be faster, and Vanya wonder if it’s her, or if he’s really checking nervously the road, as if expecting to see someone pop up.

In the end, she turns off the light and closes the door.  
She walks down the steps and reaches the car, then she squeezes herself on the passenger seat and fastens her seatbelt. When Leonard turns on the engine and smiles at her, she tries to smile back, but eventually she moves her eyes away and focuses on the pale lights of the sleeping city, on the heavy clouds of the night, and her worried thoughts run to her siblings.

* * *

 

Allison stares sickened at her silent phone, while she can see the name ‘Vanya’ disappearing from the screen. Her sister’s voice is roughly interrupted, and for some moments no one speaks.

Then Diego fiercely pushes himself up and strides toward the door, still open and hinging from the hinges.

“Diego!” Luthor approaches him and cuts his way out, but Allison knows him well enough to realize he’s not trying to block him, he’s just trying to figure out the best solution, all together.

“Get out of my way” Diego snaps, pushing him hard against his chest. With anyone else, it would have been enough to make them lose balance and send them to the ground, but not with Number One, who simply steps back.

“I swear to God, Luthor, if you don’t move-“

“Diego, calm down” Allison gets closer to them, putting the phone away in her black jeans, but with the corner of her eyes she can see a shadow quickly moving towards the door.

“Five!” she calls him, turning to face him. “Wait!”

“There’s no time for this useless fighting” he replies. “I never liked Leonard, and that was enough to give me a reason to end all this story.”

“You are right” she tells him, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. “But we need to move all together. Vanya doesn’t need any other problems, she needs a _family_.”

She tries to sweeten her tone, while she looks from one another. “We have to stop acting like this, what happened to us?”

“What happened? What _didn’t_ happen!” Diego tries to get around Number One, but he gets on his way again.

“Diego” Luthor tries to calm him down, but it seems to have the opposite effect. “Allison is right, we need to stick together,”

“Good, then start to fucking move!”

“I’ll see you there” Five sarcastically murmurs, before he ignores any complaint from his sister and teleports himself away from there. 

Allison sighs and searches for Diego’s eyes, hoping to find support there. “Please” she tells him, “please, let’s not ruin everything between us. Vanya really need us to be close”

He sends one last challenging stare to Luthor, before he exhales loudly and passes a hand through his hair. “Alright, alright” Diego mumbles. “Let’s just go, seriously”.

“I’m taking my car” Allison says, while the other two nods.

“Me too” Diego quickly steps out the house and goes to the garden on the back, where he parked his own car.

Allison takes some steps in the same direction, but Luthor stops her by taking her wrist and making her turn towards him.

She hears leaves rustling beyond the Academy, whirling due to the gelid wind that is still creeping inside their mansion and brushes her skin, giving her the chills.

“Didn’t you hear what Leonard said over the phone? He’s taking her somewhere.” Allison imagines his sister, dragged who knows where by that man, the same one who probably is the responsible of her conditions. She can picture her, sitting in a corner, scared, her back against a wall while he gets closer. “We need to hurry” she tells him, and in that same moment they can hear the sound of Diego’s tires screeching.

Luthor seems to suddenly forget whatever he was going to ask her, because his face darkens and this time she can’t read what’s on his mind. He nods and gets past her as they stride for the backyard.

The smell of rain is still strong in the air, and her soft curls move in waves along her back.

Since Luthor came in a taxi, they both hop in her car and follow the road to Vanya’s apartment.

“What about Klaus?” Luthor asks, and Allison lets out a desperate grunt. There is always too much to take care of, to keep under control, and they _always_ forget something.

Or someone, in this case.

“Take my phone” she tells him, as she grips the steering wheel with only one hand and looks for it with the other. She gets it out of her pocket and hands it to him. “Call Klaus and tell him what’s going on”

Number One tries to, but when Klaus does not answer after three tries, they opt for calling the Academy and they tell Pogo to fill Number Four in case he were to come back.

Allison parks along the sidewalk, puts the brake on and quickly unbuckles her seatbelt, but as soon as she closes the car door behind her she notices Diego kicking an aluminum trash can, sending it to roll on the ground with a loud noise and spreading all the garbage on the street.

“Shit” she whispers, and suddenly she is so scared she thinks she’s about to have a panic attack.

_Vanya is gone_ she thinks, _she’s gone, he brought her away, away from us, forever, and now we won’t –_

_No._ She forces herself to get her shit together before anyone can notice her conditions. She gets closer to her brother.

“What happened?” she asks him. He throws her an absentminded glance, as if she was not relevant, and he squeezes his eyes fiercely, bringing his forearm to cover them, while he tightens the other fist along his side.

“Fuck” Luthor murmurs next to her, watching worried the building first, and then Diego. “Ehi” he tells him, trying to untangle his arms. “Diego, c’mon”. He puts an hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get her back. C’mon Diego, she needs you too.”

Allison kind of expects Number Two to escape that touch with strength and violence, but instead he straightens his back and swallows whatever rude comeback was reaching the top of his tongue. He nods. “A-alright.” His breath is still broken and his fingers are trembling murderously.

“Where is Five?” Allison asks, when she realizes their brother is nowhere in sight.

“He immediately left” Diego explains. “When I arrived he was rambling something about Vanya and the empty flat, and then he was gone. He must be looking for her.”

“Damn it…” Luthor whispers.

“Alright, then we will too” Allison states, staring at them. “Let’s split up, and keep in touch. If anyone finds her, they warn the others,”

“I’m coming with you” Luthor gets closer to her, but she shakes her head, firm, “No, the more we split up, the more chances we have at finding her,”

“We’ll meet here in a hour, if nobody finds her before. Then we’ll choose what to do.” Diego doesn’t waste any more time with words and with a nod of the head he breaks into a run. Then, he disappears into the night.

Now that they are alone, Luthor seems to throw her a glance that she can’t – doesn’t want to- define.

“Please” he tells her, “let me come with you. I don’t like you being alone around that guy”

“This is not about me” she replies. “The point is, Luthor, that this time Vanya really _is_ with him, alone. And we don’t know what he’s doing to her.”

He keeps looking at her, insistently, but she scoots away, stopping him from whatever he was thinking.

“We’ll meet in an hour” she repeats their brother’s words.

“Allison” he calls her, and she turns again towards him. “Be careful, okay?”

She fully breathes in, in a moment of silence. “You too” she answers.

Then he nods, and disappears in the opposite direction from Diego’s.

Allison stays unmoving for some seconds beneath the night sky. Some stars are shining from between the heavy clouds, frayed and veiled, black and grey, where they are lit by the moon.

The light of a street lamp hits her.

She sighs, and is about to walk towards her car when she suddenly halts.

_This city is too big_ , she ponders, letting an exasperated sigh escape her disclosed lips. _And we don’t even know if she’s still here._

She looks around, as if she could find the solution right there, in the middle of that busy street, between the bright windows of the buildings that tower as tall cardboard boxes.

_Think_ , she tells herself, trying to clear her mind. _He must have brought her somewhere safe for him. Maybe a motel or a bed &breakfast… No, that can’t be… Anyone could have seen him in a place like that. It must be in the middle of nowhere… _

She runs towards the steps of her sister’s flat, hoping to find the door open, but it doesn’t take long to realize that Five must have gotten in teleporting himself.

She rings the bell of the flat next to her sister’s.

“Who is it?” the voice that comes out is a little old, a woman that must be around 80 years old.

“I heard a rumor” Allison tries not to feel guilty as she pronounce those words. _It’s for Vanya. Vanya is in danger._ “you will open the door to me.”

And after a metallic buzz, Allison is walking along the dark and cramped hallway. She quickly goes upstairs and reaches Vanya’s flat.

“Okay” she murmurs, taking some steps back.

The door doesn’t have any particular lock. Any thieves would manage to open it with a simple paper clip. Surely, it wouldn’t take Diego a lot to kick it down.

It takes her some minutes, but three kicks well placed are enough to throw it open.

She launches herself along the walls, looking for receipts or anything that may suggest where they are, but she finds nothing useful. She looks out a window, and notices Leonard’s car is gone. Had he gone to the airport, he would have called a taxi.

She notices the laptop on the glass table in the kitchen and scrolls through it, but not even in the history she can find anything.

_Maybe I’m wasting my time, here,_ she thinks, as she enters the bedroom. She roots around closets and wardrobes, but there are only clothes, old books, and destroyed chargers. She is about to give up when she catches glimpse of something with the corner of her eye: it’s an old photograph, placed above a dresser in a wooden frame.

She takes it in her hands and observes a young boy sitting under a wooden porch, in the company of an old lady. She has white, frizzy hair, a long and dirty apron and a huge smile on her face; her glasses reflect a glimmer.

The boy seems to have a serene expressions too, with his hands along a lounge chair.  
He has dark, curly hair, a striped t-shirt and shoes covered in mud.  
It takes Allison some seconds before she recognizes it’s Leonard.

_Why would he ever keep a photo like that at Vanya’s place? She must have been really important to him._

“The house!” she exclaims.

“Okay” she whispers, slightly freaking out. “It’s the perfect place where to take her.”

Allison takes a better look, searching for any clue on where that place might be, but can’t find any.

_I can ask Diego to find it out with the police._

But as she’s about to stuff it in the purse she’s been carrying over her right shoulder, she notices that, on the back, the frame is slightly coming off.

She moves the screws and remove it, and some yellowed and folded papers fall to the ground. She picks them up and her heart skips a beat.

It’s mug shots of Leonard, that is signed as Harold Jenkins, next to a brief description about episodes of violence that caused his imprisonment for few years.

All his data are there, such as the birth place and of birth, his relatives’ names, address and… family properties. And there, she finds the address she was looking for.

_Good_ , she thinks, resolute, as she quickly runs down the steps towards the car. _I’m coming._

* * *

 

Vanya wakes up when a hand gently shakes her shoulder. She opens her eyes slowly, and only in that moment she realizes she doesn’t know where she is.

“Leonard” she murmurs, her voice still drowsy from sleeping. “Where are we?”

“Surprise” he whispers, laying a soft kiss on her hand.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out of the car, her feet tingling and her skin shivering at the sudden cold that wraps her body.

“I told you you’d need a heavy jacket” he says, closing the door and taking their bags from the trunk.

“Where are we?” she asks again.

“This” he starts, opening his arms wide as if to catch the whole landscape with them, “once was my grandmother’s estate. Now it’s mine,”

Vanya takes in the small cottage with the thatched roof, which is gradually becoming more and more lightened by the first colors of dawn. There is a huge garden with plenty of flowerbeds and orchards, sprinkled with weeds.

All around them there are firs and pines, with their beautiful smell of coniferous, and beneath her boots she can feel needles creak.   
She kicks a small pinecone near there.

The air is fresh, almost stinging, but she can’t deny that this place is wonderful.

Her head is pounding. Sleeping alleviated the pain, but there’s still a pang that comes in waves against her temples.  

“My pills” she looks at him, frenetic. “Did you remember to take them?”

“Vanya” he gets closer to her and encircles her shoulders with an arm. “C’mon, let’s get inside,”

He pushes her towards the house, and despite its beauty it’s obvious no one has lived there in years.

Leonard brings in their luggages and rushes to start a fire in the fireplace.  
“Don’t worry” he reassures her. “Soon, it will be hot enough. In the meanwhile, why don’t you go sit on the couch, under a blanket and warm up a bit? I’m gonna make us some tea, so then we can talk.”

“Talk?” Vanya is confused, and her headache seems to only grow. “Leonard, the pill-“

“Yeah, yeah, pills, I know. Relax, Vanya”

She does feel the need to lay down, and decides to sit and curl up on a armchair, hugging her knees to her chest and pressing her back against a round and greenish pillow.

Even inside the house she can smell the perfume of the mountains.

Slowly, while a weak flame starts to crackle in the fireplace, Vanya begins to relax, she can feel the stress of the last day slipping off her body as if it was water, her headache quietly disappearing. Leonard gets closer from behind her, rests his hands on her shoulders, now wrapped in a plaid blanket. He tries to take the edges of her nerves.  

Suddenly, something strange happens: the light seeping through the windows intensifies and fully lights up the room, smells become stronger, the colors more vivid.

“Vanya” Leonard exclaims from behind her, and when she turns to look at him in the face, there she finds an enthusiastic expression, “Did you see?!”

“What?” she asks, confused.

“What you just did!”

“I didn’t do anything.” She denies, shaking her head and wondering what he is talking about.

“Yes, you did!” he insists, even more thrilled. “It was you, Vanya! _You_!”

“Leonard, I have no idea what you are talking abo-“

“You have powers, Vanya! Didn’t you see what just happened?”

“You’re wrong.” She replies. “Only my siblings do”

“No, Vanya, _you_ are wrong.” He helps her to get up. “It’s the pills. They always suppressed your potential! Trust me!”

“The pills are for my attacks, I’ve been taking them since I was a-“

“Kid?” he raises an eyebrow, as if his point should be obvious by now. “That’s why you always thought you were ordinary, you never had the chance to find your powers out! But you _are_ special, Vanya!”

_Special._

_Special._

“C’mon!” he drags her to the door. “I know exactly where to take you!”

They get out from the cottage and enter the pine forest that surrounds the mansion. Vanya smells the perfume of trees and earth.

Above them, dawn is leaving space for the morning.

Some small rives twists between the tree trunks, that they overpass jumping, scaring off birds that flee from the intertwined and knobby branches.

Leonard takes her hand and encourages her to walk faster, until they reach a deep dip filled in fresh water. It’s a lake of intense and blue shades, surrounded by rocky shores and covered in blade of grass, and the cold wind that brushes it ripples its surface.

“Why are we here?” Vanya asks him, glancing around.

“Close your eyes” he tells her.

She does, and then she can hear him whisper: “Now, focus. Search for a memory, a happy memory, and focus on what you can feel all around you.”

Vanya has no idea why Leonard is asking her something of that kind, but as her memory goes back, it digs out fading memories, such as when she and Five used to meet in the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat marshmallow sandwiches, when she, Klaus and Ben had managed to sneak away to the cinema and had seen their first movie, when Allison and Luthor had made her a cake –following Grace’s advices- for her progress with the violin, or when Diego used to cover her ears from the words of their father and bring her in his room, closing the door and staying with her all night long.

They are strange memories to be happy about, she ponders, but in a disfunctioning family like theirs, maybe that is the best she can hope for.

Suddenly, once again what had happened before happens again: everything intensifies, the colors, the smells, the light becomes brighter. A fresh breeze tickles her skin under her shirt, and Leonard’s laugh fills the air.

“Did you see?!” he seems to have to restrain himself from jumping.

Vanya opens her eyes and a soft laugh escapes her. She looks at her palms, amazed, as if she could barely believe it.

_I am like them._

_I am special, just like them._

“C’mon, let’s try something else!” Leonard takes some steps towards the border of the lake, reaching a woody fence. “See that boat?” he points to a black spot few meters away. “Try to bring it here”

“I don’t think it works that way” she replies, unsure, shifting her gaze from him to the boat.

“No, Vanya, I know you can do it!”

“Leonard, really, I don’t belie-”

“Just give it a try, please.”

Vanya looks away, but in the end she sighs.

She gets closer to the fence as well, and stretches her arm towards the boat. She tries to close her fist, gesturing, imagining to see it touch the shore.

But nothing happens.

“I told you” she repeats. “It doesn’t work that way” he lets her arm fall back agaist her side.

Leonard’s face contracts, suddenly twisting in anger, and he opens his mouth with a shout: “Try again!”

Vanya takes some steps back , widening her eyes.

“Sorry” he quickly says, as he tries to get closer, but there is something in his posture, in his frenetic stare full of _desire,_ as if he was waiting for the right moment to gain his own  powers, that makes her fall back even more.

“Stay away” she spits at him, and she can feel her heart speeding up in her chest, her lungs widening with every breath.

“Vanya-“

“ _Stay away from me!_ ” she shouts, and before he can recover from her outburst, Vanya spins around and starts running to the other side of the forest, with her hair that gets caught in the branches and the thorns that sting her arms and face.

Her feet hit against the tree roots that come out the ground, she slips over the muddy places and has to hold on to the barks with her hands not to fall, and pushes herself even more forward.

She can hear Leonard from behind her, following her as he shouts her name. She tries to lose him by taking sudden turns, not really knowing where she is going

She can see the end of the trees not too far away, and for a moment she can feel hope gush into her chest, sure she can easily reach the town once she is out of there.

But when she lands beyond where the forest opens to an empty space of land, she sees a house she recognizes.

A thatched roof, small flower beds and orchards. Leonard’s estate.

_No,_ she thinks as feels her knees give away.   
She sinks down, hitting the dry earth in front of the cottage, so desperate she doesn’t even know what to think.

She feels a hand closing around her left arm and yanking her up until she’s on feet.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Leonard is screaming so close to her face that she can feel his saliva on her cheeks.

“I tried to help you, but you really don’t understand, do you?” his hold becomes harder. “We’ll just have to do it the hard way.”

The slap is so strong that it turns her face to the other side, and her whole cheek stings as if on fire. Where her lip was starting to heal, now it is broken again, even worse than before, and the blood drips down to her chin. The metallic taste is disgusting.

When the second hit comes, she almost falls to the ground, if not for his grip.

_Stop it_ , she begs, because she can’t take it anymore, because she’s tired, _so tired_ to live in this way, because she simply wishes it all would end.

The wind grows dangerously all around them, and she can hear Leonard laughing and muttering “That’s what I was talking about!”

Her cheeks get damp, her eyes sting, and tears blend with blood.

_Stop_ , she thinks again.

But then, she’s sure she can make out Allison’s voice screaming her name and Vanya reopens her eyes. She sees her, at border of the forest, standing next to her own car.

“ _Vanya_!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!   
> Thanks for reading! Kudos, comments are always appreciated!<3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> Sorry again for being a bit late (Still better than last time though...)  
> Thanks to all the ones who left kudos/comments! I looove you! <3  
> Enjoy!

[20 minutes before]

Allison holds the phone between the fingers of a hand, and the steering wheel with the other. She feels tired for not sleeping all night, while the sun is starting to rise in the distance: the sky is of an intense blue above, but at the horizon it’s striated in pale pink, orange and turquoise.

“C’mon, Diego, where the hell are you?” she murmurs, as she turns left following the navigator. It’s already been an hour since she last saw her brothers, and this is the fourth time she’s tried calling him. “Pick up your damn phone”

She follows the directions on the signs along the road, while the voice mail starts repeating the same speech. She hangs up and is about to call him again, when suddenly her own phone rings, and the name of her brother appears on the screen.

She immediately answers “Diego! What the hell were you doing, I’ve been trying to call you for an hour!”

“Yeah, sorry about that” Diego pants, and it seems as if he’s run a marathon.

“Are you okay?” she asks him, furrowing her eyebrow into a worried scowl.

“Yeah, don’t sweat it” he replies from the other side of the line. “I just thought it might be worth it to take a look from above as well”

Allison rolls her eyes and lets out a grunt, “Don’t tell me you looked for Vanya running on roofs like an idiot”

“Why did you call?” he immediately changes subject. “Have you found her?” there’s an edge in his tone, anxious to find out the answer.

“Yeah, I think I know where Leonard is taking her, I’m heading there right now” she says, as the lights of the cars coming the opposite way lighten up her face. “I’ll send you the address.”

“Allison, wait, I don’t think you should go there alone.”

“We can’t waste more time, Diego” Allison takes a right at the exit. Only fifteen minutes, and she’ll get there. “You’d better hurry up, it’s not that close. I’ll see you there.”

“Allison” before she hangs up, Diego adds: “Be careful… and call. As soon as you find her.”

“You can count on that” she says.

Then, she shares her position on the phone.

[Present time]

The mountain looks like an ice cream cone turned upside-down, covered in pines and spruces that pop up along the sides, as little constellations. The sky is lightly blue and there’s a fresh breeze that moves the green leaves in the branches, and Allison wonders how she is going to find a little cottage in this immense forest. However, out of a sudden she notices an agglomerate of grey and blackish clouds, condensed above a small area in the distance.

She’s at a crossroads, and she chooses to take the road that points towards that direction. She doesn’t know what to call what she is feeling, exactly, maybe a _premonition_ , but all she knows is that what she is seeing is absolutely _not normal_.

And her family is anything but normal.

So, she believes she should trust her guts.   
After five minutes of riding along a steep, dirty track, she reaches a point where the branches are so low and dense that her car is barely able to hold on.

She leans out the window, searching for a sign that might tell her where she is, but when she can’t find any, she just sighs and keeps following the road.

At a certain point, the trees grow wider and more scattered, and she can see the limit of the forest. She manages to get out and finally finds the cottage she was looking for. However, she can also see her sister, in the middle of a circular forecourt, on the verge of falling to the ground, with her eyes closed tight and her chin covered in blood, her arm raised where Leonard is holding on to keep her standing.

Allison can feel her blood swirling and boiling inside, so she puts the brake on and hops off before the car is completely still. It makes a strange noise and then it dies. She slams the door, but all around them there is a strong and cold wind whirling, making a noise loud enough to deafen everything else.

“Vanya!” she tries to call her, but she doesn’t seem to hear her.

Leonard notices her and his eyes widen as he looks around, as if he is quickly trying to choose what to do.

Allison takes some steps forwards, closing her fists along her sides, trembling with the wish of hitting that man hard in the face.   
“ _Vanya!_ ” she screams again, and this time her sister does open her eyes.

As soon as their eyes lock, the expression on Vanya’s face softens, her lip starts quivering, her eyes waters even more, and huge tears sail her cheeks, swollen and covered in blood. Allison feels her heart shattering in her chest, she can feel it vibrating with such a pain that she can physically feel throbbing waves against her ribcage.

She feels horrible, seeing her sister like that, so desperate.  
“Allison” she murmurs, with the voice of a little kid, fragile, and suddenly the wind drops. The clouds above their heads barely dissipate.

Allison notices all that, and she is smart enough to understand that it cannot be a coincidence. _But that’s not possible_ , she thinks, because Vanya has always been the ordinary one of the family, the simple ‘Number Seven’, she never-

Her thoughts stop in their tracks and go back to a night of at least ten years ago, when her father forced her to use her powers on her sister. How could she forget about it?

“Oh, Vanya…” she murmurs, bringing her hands to her mouth, covering it.

But this is not the time for it, now the most important thing is to take Vanya away from there, from him, to a safe place.

“No!” Leonard seems to read her mind, and he pushes Vanya behind himself, who tries to break free from his hold. She looks at Allison, reaching out for her.

Allison takes a step forwards, but Leonard quickly puts a hand behind his trousers, and when it comes back in sight it reflects a strange light.

_Shit_ , she thinks, watching his fingers clasped around the trigger of a gun, pointed towards her.

“Leonard!” Vanya screams, trying to shift the aim of the weapon away from her sister. He fights back and tries to knock her to the ground, hitting her hard with his elbow against her nose. Even from that distance, Allison can see her face twitching in pain.

Vanya falls, the palms of her hands crushing on the green grass covered in white daisies that are still closed, too shy for the cold that still lingers in march.

“I heard a rumor” Allison blurts out, doing the first thing that comes to her mind. She has to save her sister, she has to save her, she has to-

_Bang_

Allison hears herself screaming at the top of her lungs, a pain never felt before digging its way into her skin, her bones, her muscles tearing apart under an invisible and incandescent flame that is spreading in her leg, and she crumbles to the ground. She can’t stop screaming, while her jeans become sticky with a dense liquid, so dark that she doesn’t even believe it’s blood until she realizes it’s gushing from her thigh.

There, the stain is growing bigger and bigger.

She hears Vanya screaming her name, desperate, crying, _“Allison!”_.  
Allison wants to turn towards her, but she can’t stop staring at her leg, while she feels every fiber inside of her snapping, her eyelids becoming heavier.

With an huge effort, she rolls her eyes to her sister’s, sees her mouth open into a shout, into a cry, her fists beating against her chest, grabbing her face, her eyes red and puffy, her ribcage quickly lifting and lowering.

She keeps screaming her name, and all around them the wind rises, the clouds thickens, thunders start rumbling as the sound of an engine, as if Leonard was shooting the sky as well.  
Lightning bolt to the ground in the distance, and Allison notices Leonard laughing, delighted by what he is seeing.

Vanya notices it too, and she suddenly stands up, ferocity on her face, an implacable anger, and stones starts rising, pouncing all around them, and branches fall from the trees and whirl around.

Leonard keeps laughing, but then one of the branches stops midair, and with a nod Vanya sends it crushing against his skull, where it sticks in his right eye.

Allison doesn’t see him, but she hears him screaming.   
Her strength fails her and she does everything she can to stay awake, to make sure she watches Leonard die, and when her sister throws herself on him, she can only think _Die, bastard._

She is sure that’s exactly what’s going to happen, while Vanya, above him, keeps pummeling his face, but then a small needle shines between his fingers.

‘ _Vanya!_ ’ she wishes she could shout, warn her, but she can’t.   
Instead, she feels her eyes rolling in her head and the darkness surrounds her, just as the needle digs in Vanya’s neck, and her sister goes still, before she crumbles to the ground as well.

 

* * *

 

 [19 years ago]

Diego looks satisfied at his target.  
Five knives are stuck into its stomach, three in its chest, and two into the supposed head.   
He’s definitely getting better, now that he has learnt to make the trajectory bend to his liking.

He brings his hands to his sides, with a small smirk on his face.   
“y-y-you a-are d-de-dead!” he shouts to it, and his confidence falters a bit.

He sighs and closes his eyes, picturing those words in his mind.   
_You are dead, you are dead, you are dead._

“Y-you are d-dead!” he tries, and this time it goes a little better. _Mom_ , he thinks. Surely, she’ll be happy to see his progress, she will be proud of him and of his hard work.   
He excitedly leaves his room, running towards the stairs to go look for Grace and drag her back there.

He can already imagine her, ready to scold him about the mess, but at the same time to clap him and cheer with him, hugging and kissing him.

He’s so enthusiastic that he almost trips on a floorboard, but he manages to grab a hold of the handrail that encircles the landing, just in time to avoid falling.

There’s a good smell in the air, he hopes of waffles as he really would like to have some. He could even call Number One, so he’d show him that he deserves to be the leader as well.

He’s about to go downstairs, when a muffled sound catches his attention. It comes from an ajar door, on the other side of the stairs. It’s Vanya’s room.

Diego looks at the ground floor from above, and he glimpses Grace moving in the kitchen, and he’s tempted to pretend he hasn’t heard anything and to go down anyway, but when he’s just about to take a step, he hears that sound again.

He sighs, and slowly gets closer to his sister’s bedroom. As he gradually reaches it, it becomes easier to understand that whoever is inside is crying.

“V-vanya?” he asks, pushing forwards the door with a palm. This opens with a squeak, and he can see his sister laying on her bed.

He doesn’t think she has heard him, so he tries a little louder: “Vanya?”

She immediately sits up, brushing her arm on her eyes. “What’s wrong, Diego? Do you need anything?”

He shakes his head and comes in.

“E-e-verything o-okay?”

He feels himself blushing, embarrassed by the way he talks.

“Yeah, don’t worry” she quickly answers.

He takes some steps forwards, and closes the door behind his back.

He doesn’t like talking, he never did. It makes him feel stupid. So, he keep silent while he sits on the bed next to her, watching the tip of his shoes.

“And you?” she asks him, trying to find his stare with her dark eyes from beneath her bangs.

Diego nods and looks away.

He knows what is troubling her sister: it’s always their dad.   
Diego hates him.   
He’s always yelling at Vanya, making her feel useless or leaving her behind.

He takes her hand- she is so surprised by it that she lets out an ‘Oh?’- and with the other he picks up the violin and the bow that his sister has left on the table. He brings her to his room, forgetting about Grace and not noticing how Vanya seems to be impressed by the knives in the target.

He closes the door, and hands her the violin.   
Then, he takes the knives out and starts practicing again.

Vanya doesn’t say anything for a while, then she settles on his bed and starts playing. Diego has heard that melody many times during the last days, and by now he knows it by heart. He hides a smile.   
They spend the rest of the afternoon like that, with him practicing, becoming more and more precise, and her filling the room with music.

One day, Diego will take all his siblings away from that bloody house.

[Present]

Diego has no idea why that memory, right now, came up to his mind, but he is surprised by it: until now, he had completely forgotten about it.

He holds with even more strength the steering wheel, while he follows the direction of the navigator.

“Accelerate!” Luthor prompts him from the passenger seat.

“Shut up!” he replies, but he pushes the accelerator a bit more anyway. Diego has no doubts that Number One is behaving that way only because Allison must have arrived to that place for a while now, without ever calling them.

“I still don’t understand why I chose to come with you” Five murmurs from the backseats.

“Maybe, and I say _maybe_ , it’s because you pretty much destroyed your body with all that teleportation” Diego argues, and for a moment he wonders if that’s what it feels like when you are the smartest person in a room.

“Bullshit”

“It’s not! And now stop it before you make me go hysteric”

Diego speeds up even more, but as soon as the highway leaves room to a dirt road, that climbs up a mountain in circles for kilometers, he is forced to slow down anyway.

Luckily, Allison had sent them her ‘real time location’ on whatsapp: Since ten minutes ago, her signal has not moved from the same position.

Diego has violated every speed limit, exceeding them considerably, and it only took him half an hour to get there, probably half the time it took Allison.

They keep going up along the hairpins, as the branches become lower and start hitting against the glass of the car. The small pale blue point that shows Allison’s position on the screen keeps pulsing in the same place.

The distance on the screen decreases, until they reach a small cottage with a thatched roof, surrounded by a pine forest, flower beds and orchards.  

Few meters away from the door, a dark silhouette is slumped over the fresh earth.   
Diego inhales sharply, and he can feel his breath breaking: a liquid and dense spot keeps spreading beneath the body, from the sleeve of the coat comes out a hand of a soft brown color, and a waterfall of curls pours all around the head.

“Allison!!” Luthor throws the door of the car open and hops down with a jump before they are completely still, running towards their sister.

Diego and Five quickly get down as well, reaching them.

Luthor takes her in his arms and shakes her, calling her name.

“Shit” Diego murmurs, taking in the exit wound of a bullet, while Five teleports himself, disappearing from sight with a sound similar to a snap. Soon after, he appears again.

“They are gone” he states, looking around. “We need to hurry up and find Vanya”

“What about Allison?” Luthor watches him firmly. “We can’t leave her here, she needs help!”

“Move” Diego kneels down and lays the three central fingers of his hand on the side of her neck.

He waits for some seconds, and he finds it.

“The pulse it’s weak, but it’s there.”

“Vanya is in danger” Number Five barely says, and Diego thinks he sees his eyes darkening, more than they usually are. “I have no intentions of giving that man the chance of hurting her.”

Diego is about to speak up, when a small moan reaches them from below.

“Allison!” Luthor moves her hair out of her face. “Allison, can you hear me??”

She slowly rises her eyelids, her stare lost into nothing and her visage pale. “Vanya…” she mumbles weakly.

“You know where she is?” Five asks her, his attention drawn by that name.

“Leonard… he...”

“Don’t strive too much” Luthor whispers, holding her a bit closer to his body, but she shakes her head and keeps talking. “Need to find her… Vanya has…”

“Is she hurt?!” Five becomes more insistent, and Diego almost feels guilty by sharing his worry when Allison is literally bleeding out in front of them.

“Has…powers”

“Powers?” the three of them asks at the same time.

“Maybe she lost too much blood and his delirious” Diego says, wondering what his sister must have seen in her mind, but she goes on talking. “No, she has them, really.” her eyes shift to Diego and Five. “She is in danger” she says.

Then her eyelids close, her head rolls on Luthor’s arm, who shakes her, once again screaming her name.

“That’s enough” Diego throes him the keys of the car, and Luthor catches them. “Bring her to Grace and Pogo, they will know what to do” he focuses on Five. “Can you teleport with someone else?”

“I never did it before” he replies, but something in his expression makes him understand he is not planning on giving up without trying.

Luthor gets up, their sister still between his arms, senseless.

“Whatever happens” Diego tells him. “Warn us.”

He nods, serious. “You too.”

Then he sprints towards the car, lays Allison down on the backseats, and takes place on the driver seats, turning on the engine with a thunder.

“Where can they be?” Diego watches Five, feeling his chest vibrating with every breath he takes, his fists balling.

“If he came here, it was because he didn’t want to be seen by anyone; he needs a safe place” Five reflects. “Now that he shot Allison, he is in big troubles. He’ll probably try to leave the country, but he needs time to organize everything.”

“He’s home” Diego states.

“Exactly” Five replies, and grabs his wrist.

“You sure you can do this?” Diego asks.

“We don’t have time to be sure” Five closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. “Vanya is in danger”

Then, a snap of fingers echoes, and the forest falls into silence.

* * *

 

Vanya feels as if her head was heavy, and waves of pain hammer against her temples. On the tip of her tongue she can still taste a metallic flavor and her chin is caked in something dry.   
She tries to lift her eyelids, but it’s so hard she doesn’t manage.

She feels a pressure along her wrists and ankles, and when she tries to move her hands to bring them to the head, she realizes she can’t. There’s something rigid behind her back, something she is sitting on, and as soon as she’s clearheaded enough to think straight, she understands she’s tied to a chair.

_What happened?_ She wonders.

She had gone to the Academy, had met her siblings, and then she had gone back home.   
No, it was absurd. Leonard would have never let her.

_Leonard…_

When she thinks that name, she feels strange, as in danger.   
She remembers a sweet perfume of conifer, earth and mountains.   
_Right_ , _Leonard’s estate._

But what happened after they left? She had found out she had powers…

Maybe it had just been a very long dream. After all, how was it possible for her to have powers? _Her,_ that for all her life she had always known she was the ordinary, the ‘normal’ one of the family.

Her siblings were the one who could do incredible things, not her.   
It was Diego, Five, Luthor, Klaus, All-

_Allison!_

She remembers her sister, laying in a pool of blood that soaks her clothes while she screams, a shout so desperate that Vanya can’t believe it was just a dream anymore.

She manages to open her eyes, and with great surprise she finds out she’s in her own flat. Leonard is standing in front of her, taking money out of the safe, a huge suitcase opened on the floor, his passport on the table next to a gun.

“What are you doing?” she asks him, with her voice still drowsy.

What did he gave her to reduce her to that state?

“Oh, good, you are awake” he comments, turning towards her. “We are leaving”

“I’m not coming anywhere with you” she replies, but whatever it is that is still running in her blood, makes her answer sound very less firm.

“Oh, I really think you will” he answers back.

He gets closer to the chair, in front of her and squaring her with a strange expression: “I never wanted to get to this point” he murmurs, sighing.

He walks away and disappears in the bathroom, then he comes back with a semitransparent and orange tin in his hand. There is something inside, that moves with a sound that she knows very well.

_My pills._

“C’mon” Leonard unscrews the cap and takes on un out. “Take it”

“No” this time she sounds definitely more secure of herself, despite the voice.

“Don’t be a kid” her tells her, putting it against her lips, that she keeps sealed.

“Vanya” he sighs, as it was all normal, as if he hasn’t just shot her sister, leaving her in a wood to die. “I could just give you another dose of tranquillizers and bring you away with me. The last I gave you was so strong you won’t be able to use your powers for some more hours.”

He moves away from her and puts the pill back on the tin.

“If you don’t want to take it now, I’ll give you some time to choose in which way you want to leave this country”

“You knew about my powers” she realizes.

He seems to be delighted by that sentence. “Exactly” he answers. “Or better yet, I simply found it out before you did.”

“When? And how?”

Vanya doesn’t understand. She never gave signs of something like that. How could he know something so personal about her that she herself didn’t know?

“Just the other day” he explains, and leans with his hands against the small table, few inches away from where the gun is. “You really thought I wouldn’t figure out that you had gone to the Academy?”

Vanya’s eyes widen. “You followed me”

“When I didn’t find you in the bedroom, where I left you, I took the car and drove there”

“You are crazy” she says those words as if she was spitting them to his face.

 “Maybe” he admits. “But I am not the monster here”

_Asshole._

“And what does this have to do with my powers?”

“When I reached the Academy, I couldn’t let any of your siblings see me” he explains. “So, I left the car a block away and came by foot, just in time to see that junkie throw a small red book from a window”

_Klaus._

“Don’t call him that!” Vanya can feel anger boiling in her blood.

“Whatever” he replies, as if it was nothing important. “Still, I picked it up. Guess who it belonged to?”

She keeps silent, no idea on what to say.

“Your dear daddy”

This surprises her enough to focus all her attention on him.

“Oooh, all secrets I find out! Yours as well. You father was well aware of your powers, and he gave you those pills for a reason”

_He knew it_ , she thinks, not really understanding, with her heart that speeds up in her chest.

“It’s not true” she murmurs, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Oh, it _is_ true!” he seems to be particularly amused by that situation. “The pills he gave you were meant to contain you”

“Stop it!” she tells him, because it’s too much to take in.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you want to know all the truth? Here it is. We are in this situation because of you, Vanya”

“Stop it” she repeats. “It’s not true”

“No? If you had listened to me, and done what I told you to do, now we would still be in my estate, happily ever after, and your sister would still be alive!”

“ _Stop it!”_

Vanya can hear herself screaming, and despite the tranquillizer , for a brief moment, beyond the window the wind grows strongly.

Leonard notices it too, and he seems to lose the confidence he has shown until now.

He quickly moves away from the table and takes a pill out once again, trying to force her to swallow it.

Vanya can slowly feel her powers coming back. They are still weak, but they are there.

“Take it!” he shouts, trying to open her mouth.

But she keeps it sealed, shaking her head.

_Not this time, Leonard, not this time._

* * *

 

When they land in front of Vanya’s flat, Five is surprised to see they made it. He feels like shit. His legs are trembling and his breath is broken, his heart it beating hard in his chest, as if he ran all the way there from the mountain.

He throws a quick glance to Diego: he seems to be about to throw up, but a part from that it should all be fine. After all, he is still in one piece, awake, and can stand.

“How the hell…”Diego starts, but he stops when he feels about to gag. “How the hell can you do it so often?”

“It’s _my_ power, it would be useless if I got sick every time I used it” he replies, but he can’t pretend not to be exhausted.

“Hey” Diego notices his conditions. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Don’t joke” he replies. _As if I came all this way and didn’t deserve to punch him with my own hands._

“Enough with teleporting”

“Stop it” Five grabs his wrist and, without listening to his brother’s words, he dematerializes and reappears inside the house.

They end up in a narrow hallway, exactly behind the main door, next to a forsaken bike.

As soon as they land, Five knows he’s reached his limit in teleporting with someone else. He had never done it before, and didn’t think it could be so exhausting.

“Five!” Diego stares at him, livid. “I said-“

“Yeah yeah” he dismisses the question. “C’mon, hurry”

They move towards the stairs and start climbing silently, when at a certain point they hear a voice screaming, _“Stop it!”_

“Vanya!” they both shout.

And God, Five can physically feel anger spreading in his chest. It’s so strong, that the exhaustion of some moments before is completely forgotten.

They bolt upstairs, arriving in front of the door of the flat.

Diego takes some steps back, and when they hear a slap and moan coming from inside, he kicks it down the hardest he can.

The two of them rush inside, and when Five sees his sister with a swollen cheek, blood caked on her chin, huge bruises forming, his gaze shifts to Leonard, his fist shaking along his sides.

“Bastard” Diego, next to him, jerks forwards, ready to punch that living trash standing next to their sister.

Suddenly though, Diego notices something that forces him to stop.

Five moves a bit aside and sees it as well.

Leonard is holding a gun between his fingers, the black metal shining due to the light that comes from a window.

“Now, we are going to do as I say” he states, with a maniacal gaze, an expression that shifts from excitement of having power over them, to the fear of losing it all.

Then, he brings the barrel of the gun to Vanya’s left temple.

The corners of his mouth lift upwards into a smile.

 

__  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now! I really hope you enjoyed!  
> Kudos and comments are really appreciated!  
> Machi <3


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